


lilacism

by s_coups



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Blood Drinking, Blood Play, M/M, Mentions of Violence, Moscow Ballet, Vampires, gratuitous use of the word fuck, ten has a cat named momo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-14
Updated: 2019-02-07
Packaged: 2019-03-19 01:31:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 38,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13694079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/s_coups/pseuds/s_coups
Summary: think: bitter winds, snow capped mountains, silk bed sheets, cold fingers, and the Bolshoi Ballet. think: sharp fangs, the softest skin, blue veins pumping nothingness, dark eyes, and an endangered species. think: doyoung.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dashirun](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dashirun/gifts).



> there's a playlist that goes along with this fic that you can find [here on spotify.](https://open.spotify.com/user/efirny/playlist/7oZ8OiuyzSHHgDhqEpy96q?si=aP6GcXNhQdWtlyEbLpEJag)

Yuta wonders, as he travels by foot through the streets of Moscow, winding his way through the masses of people, why on earth anyone would ever want to live here.

Other than the prestigious architecture and history, the bitter cold and dozens of feet of snow the city produces yearly was more than enough incentive to shy him away from ever visiting here (or at least, only visiting when Ten begs him twice a year to come watch his cat for the week while he has rehearsal before a show.)

Flying from Seoul to Moscow to watch a cat was probably a strange thing to do for most people (and a waste of time and money), but Yuta does miss seeing Ten. He'd moved over two years ago after accepting an offer to join the Bolshoi Ballet, and phone calls could only do so much for someone as social as Yuta, who needs to be with a person to feel like he's having a proper conversation with them.

So, when Ten had first joined, and called Yuta in a panic the week before his first show wailing that he hadn't been there long enough to know anyone and didn't speak Russian and he was going to be spending nights at the theater rehearsing the choreography and didn't have anyone to feed his cat, Yuta stupidly offered himself up as a babysitter, too blinded by Ten's absence to realize what exactly that entailed.

That was two years ago, and somehow Yuta had ended up coming back each year before Ten's shows to "watch his cat" (which was more of an excuse to just visit and complain about the bitter cold and take nice pictures for his mom back home.)

At the moment, Yuta is trying to remember which street he has to turn on to get back to Ten's apartment. He can't read any of the signs, despite Ten's many failed attempts at teaching him basic Russian phrases and letters, but he doesn't really mind. It was nice to wander. He liked being lost in a different city. It made him feel like he was in an alternate universe.

He finally finds the right street, only recognizing it by the kitsch looking toy shop on the corner. He's a few blocks away from the apartment when a strong gust of wind sends a paper plastered against the bricks flying right into his face. He splutters stupidly, and he thinks he hears some kids nearby laughing at him as he waves his arms wildly trying to get it off.

When he finally pulls it off, he's about to toss it in the trash when something catches his eye. The paper is an obnoxious bright yellow color, no doubt to catch reader's attention, but that's not what gets his. It's written in Russian, obviously, so Yuta has no idea what it says, but right smack dab in the middle is a black and white, blurry mugshot of a vampire.

Yuta had only met a handful of vampires in his entire life- most of them when he was a child, as they had become increasingly endangered over the years, hunted almost to extinction for the ivory their fangs are made of, and their saliva, which many people believed had healing powers. He doesn't remember much about them, but he does remember meeting one at a park when he was little. He had been on the swing set, and another girl around his age had gotten onto the swing beside him, matching her pace with his. He smiled at her, and she'd smiled back, flashing tiny fangs where her canines should be. His mother had immediately grabbed his hand and dragged him away, and to this day he remembers the sad look on the girl’s face as he left.

The photo is of a vampire that killed someone in the eighties in London. It's a picture that's been used constantly since, mostly in anti-vampire propaganda and school safety videos. It's used so often Yuta doesn't think there's anyone on earth who doesn't know the man's face; slicked back hair, dark eyes and lips pulled back into a snarl so his fangs are bared while he holds a placard up for the camera.

He hadn't seen this photo used in awhile, not since high school when they made all the students take a class on vampire safety and precautions. The flyer has lots of exclamation points on it, so he figures it must be a warning of sorts. He pockets it, reminding himself to ask Ten to translate it when he gets back.

 

The flyer slips his mind completely until he wears the same jeans nearly two days later. He's digging through his suitcase looking for something clean to wear, and when he puts the jeans on and checks the pockets he finds the crumpled up, folded flyer. He nearly trips over himself running out of the room to get Ten.

He finds Ten on the living room floor, the coffee table pushed aside as the other stretches. He's in a full split, stretching his foot back as he does so, and he doesn't even bother getting up when Yuta slides past him on the wood floors and thrusts the flyer in his face.

"What does this say?" Yuta demands, dropping to sit cross-legged beside him.

Ten clears his throat, letting go of his foot to point his toes in those silly half socks he wears that Yuta thinks make his feet look delicate and feminine. He takes the paper and scans it, one eyebrow raising as he does.

"It's a wanted poster," He explains, handing it back to Yuta. He rises out of his split carefully so he can switch legs, and then sinks back down with ease. "It says there were multiple sightings of a vampire in the seventh district, and to let the authorities know if you see it."

Yuta looks down at the flyer. "That's it?"

"Well, what did you think it said?" Ten snorts as he stretches forward to pull at his other foot.

"I don't know," Yuta say, trying to hide his disappointment. He sighs, crumpling up the paper again and tossing it across the room. "Are they allowed to arrest vampires here?"

"I don't think they'd even arrest it. They'd probably just shoot it on sight," Ten comments. "Russians don't give a fuck. They don't have the same laws as we do in Korea."

"I don't even think there are any vampires left in Korea," Yuta says wistfully.

"There's bunches in Russia," Ten replies, rising out of his split to sit cross-legged as well and begin stretching his arms. "Supposedly there's, like, dozens out in the Ural mountains. They never come to the cities, so that's why there's a flyer out."

Yuta's eyes widen as he imagines hundreds of vampires wandering the freezing, ice capped mountains. "Have you been there?"

Ten gives him a pointed look. "I don't even have time to feed my own cat. Does it look like I have time to go vampire watching in the mountains?"

Yuta sighs, getting to his feet. "You're no fun."

" _You're_ no fun!" Ten shoots back defensively. "I have five shows in a row next week! Go play Van Helsing with someone else."

Yuta picks up one of the other boy's pointe shoes from the coffee table and flings it in his direction. It misses, but Ten shrieks at him anyway while Yuta scampers off hiding his laughter.

 

Yuta has never been quick witted. Fast thinking and problem solving has never been his forte, and most of the time putting him in situations that forced him to do just that made him crack under the pressure.

This thought crosses his mind when he finds himself staring at a pool of blood on the sidewalk, almost indistinguishable from the melted snow puddles in the dark, the only light available the flickering street lamps. But Yuta can smell that sickly copper smell that only comes from blood, and see the deep red tint to the puddle.

The streets are empty, nearing two in the morning. He had slipped out to the 24 hour pharmacy to pick up painkillers for Ten after the other had kept him awake the past two nights wailing over sore feet and torn ligaments. He had expected bitter cold, and winds that made his cheeks ache, but he hadn’t expected to follow drops of blood along the sidewalk into an alley only to find a huddled figure in the corner, sitting in a pool of what could only be their own blood.

It’s so dark Yuta can barely make out the shape, but as his eyes adjust, he can pick out small details. Broad shoulders, short hair, long legs curled underneath them.

Yuta clears his throat, desperately trying to remember the most basic Russian words Ten had taught him over the years.

“Hello?” He tries. The person moves just the slightest, curling into themselves even more, hiding behind their black wool coat. Yuta wrings his hands in front of him. He doesn’t know anything other than _Hello_ , _Goodbye,_ _Thank You_ , and _Have you seen my cat?_ in Russian.

He tries switching to English, which was pretty commonly spoken in Moscow from what he’d experienced, and he was much better at. “Are you okay? Do you need help?”

He steps forward, and the person lets out a weak whimpering noise, scrambling to get further away from him. He pulls back immediately, holding his hands in the air as a sign of peace, until the person pulls at their coat again and he can see their face and more of their body.

They’re absolutely _covered_ in blood, almost to the point Yuta doesn’t believe it’s all their own, because surely no one would be able to survive losing that much blood? As they move, they hiss in pain, and Yuta catches a glimpse of their chest, sweater torn open in slashes, blood still soaking into the fabric. Even their face, hidden in the shadows, is clearly smeared with blood.

“Oh, fuck,” Yuta breathes out, completely forgetting to speak English and stumbling over his words in Korean instead. “Oh, fuck, you’re really hurt. Fuck. Just-just hold on.”

His hands shake as he pulls his phone from his pocket and punches in Ten’s phone number.

“Did you get-” Ten starts the second he answers, but Yuta cuts him off.

“Ten, there’s uh, this person,” Yuta starts. “This guy, fuck, Ten, he’s bleeding _everywhere_. He needs help, I don’t know what to do-”

Ten lets out a noise like he choked on his own spit. “What? What are you talking about?”

“This fucking person is dying in front of me!” Yuta snaps. “They’re just bleeding everywhere and I don’t speak any Russian and I don’t know what to do.”

“Okay, um, calm down,” Ten says, which really does nothing to help at all. “Where are you? How much blood is there?”

“Like, a ton,” Yuta leans forward slightly, trying to catch the person’s eyes, but it’s so dark he can barely find them. “I don’t know how he’s even alive right now, there’s so much fucking blood. I don’t even know if he’s fully conscious.”

“Where are you?”

A car ambles by on the street behind him, their headlights flashing into the alleyway for a split second. As Ten’s voice echoes through his phone, the light illuminates the man. The blood shining bright red, splattered everywhere, the pool underneath his feet. When Yuta looks at his face, he’s looking directly at him, eyes wide and bright and slightly scared.

The man opens his mouth as though to speak, and all Yuta sees in that second is fangs.

“Yuta!” Ten shouts, and Yuta is snapped out of the moment as the car passes and he’s thrown into pitch darkness again. “Are you okay?”

“ _Vampire_ ,” Yuta whispers, but it comes out so quietly it was more like he just exhaled, eyes locked with the other man’s- or vampire’s.

“What? Are you okay?”  
“Vampire. It’s a vampire,” Yuta repeats, voice shaky and slow. “It’s not a person, Ten.”

Ten curses. “Fuck, Yuta, get out of there! Where are you? Oh my god, let me call the police to come collect it, it must be the one that was loose in the seventh district. Fuck, where are you-”

As Ten prattles on, the vampire mouths something at him. It’s too dark for Yuta to see what he’s saying, and he doesn’t even speak Russian. He takes a step closer, and this time the vampire doesn’t shy away, instead trying again to speak.

Finally, over Ten’s panicked yelling, Yuta hears it. In a deep, gentle voice, that definitely did not fit the current situation, the vampire murmurs in perfect Korean, “Help.”

Only a little frozen in place by shock, Yuta has enough mind to cut Ten off. “Don’t call the cops!”

Ten shrieks, high pitched and piercing, and even the vampire winces at the sound. “Are you out of your fucking mind? That thing is gonna kill you!”

“It’s not,” Yuta says, inching forward slowly towards the wounded creature. The vampire still doesn’t move, and the closer Yuta gets the more he can recognize the emotion in his eyes- which is definitely fear. “It’s scared.”

“It’s _scared_?” Ten repeats. “I swear to fucking god, Yuta, if you bring that thing back to my apartment-”

“But it’s hurt!”

Ten starts shouting in Russian, voice raising an octave higher the angrier he gets. Yuta hangs up.

The two of them are thrown into silence, and now that he’s closer Yuta can hear the vampire’s ragged breathing. From what he knows, vampires don’t need to breathe to survive, but when they’re badly injured, they use it to help them heal faster.

Yuta keeps his hands raised in front of him in a sign of peace until he’s standing over the vampire, who just stares at him, brow furrowed in fear.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” Yuta says slowly. He doesn’t think the vampire understands, but he blinks at him like he does.

Yuta drops to his knees, wincing when he feels the pool of blood immediately start soaking into his jeans. He holds out one hand (palm down, because he’s not an idiot, and he wasn’t about to present his bare wrist to a vampire, no matter how hurt it was), waiting for him to accept it so he could help him stand.

The vampire stares at him for a long moment, eyes flickering from his hand to his face, as though wondering if Yuta was going to turn on him and attack at any second. In his pocket, Yuta feels his phone vibrate angrily, no doubt Ten calling again. Yuta ignores it, trying to hold steady eye contact with the vampire so he knows he means well.

He finally seems to understand Yuta isn’t going to hurt him, because he slides his own hand out from beneath his black coat. His skin is surprisingly not as hauntingly white as Yuta thought it would be, but when he accepts the outstretched hand he almost jumps from how cold the skin is; like touching dry ice, or a frozen metal pole.

Yuta tries to tug him up, and it’s futile. The vampire is an immovable object, and he raises an eyebrow, looking almost amused at Yuta’s struggling despite the situation.

“Don’t laugh,” Yuta half whines, half pants.

The vampire lurches forward on his heels, and in a second he’s standing inches from Yuta’s face, slumping forwards slightly so most of his weight is leaning against the other’s frame. Yuta hooks an arm around his waist to keep him up, and he feels more blood start seeping through his jacket sleeve. He pulls one of the vampire’s arms over his own shoulder, heaving his weight up to rest mostly on his hip. The vampire’s head lolls slightly onto his shoulder, and he tries not to flinch away.

He’s lucky Ten’s apartment is only a few blocks away, but it still feels like miles when he’s dragging a creature that feels like carrying a cinder block. He knows they’re leaving a trail of blood behind them, but he can’t be bothered to care.

When he’s finally struggled up the staircases to the third floor, he’s full out sweating, and the vampire seems barely conscious, gasping like a human would while in their dying throes. Yuta bangs on the front door a little too loudly in his haste.

It’s thrown open after the first knock like Ten was waiting for him, and sure enough he doesn’t look surprised that Yuta has an armful of vampire- more frustrated and very annoyed.

  
“Quick, bring him in before anyone sees,” Ten whispers, ushering them in and looking around the foyer as though expecting someone to be watching them. He slams the door behind them as Yuta begins laying the vampire on the couch.

“Not on the couch!” Ten shrieks, jumping forward to try and push the vampire right onto the floor. “On the floor, on the floor!”  
“Are you serious?” Yuta demands. “He’s dying!”

“Vampires can’t die, and that couch is real leather,” Ten snaps. “I don’t want vampire blood all over it.”

Yuta glares at him but complies, lowering the vampire onto the wood floor. His head lolls to the side, mouth opened just the slightest, and Yuta can’t take his eyes off the long fangs poking out over his bottom lip.

Ten throws a towel at him, kneeling down beside them with wet washcloth in his hand. “Take his shirt off, I’m not doing this myself,” Ten orders. Yuta nods, peeling back the wool coat to tug the shredded shirt off the vampire. His skin is just as cold as before, and Yuta shivers the more he touches it.

Ten starts wiping at the wounds, the washcloth soaking with blood in a matter of minutes. The vampire stutters over a cough, chest heaving once more. They both jump back, surprised, when he opens his eyes, staring at the ceiling.

The wound on his chest pulses visibly, as though it’s taken on a life of it’s own. Blood pumps steadily out of it in waves, spilling over his stomach and leaking onto Ten’s dark wood floors. They both watch, stunned, as the vampire heaves another gasp, greedily sucking in air, and the wound begins to slowly close by itself. Muscle creeps over the gouged, more open parts, skin stretching to cover it all in an orchestrated method, precise and deliberate.

The vampire stops breathing heavily, instead falling completely still, eyes still open in a blank stare. Yuta glances up at Ten, at a loss for what to do next.

“Is he dead?” He whispers. Ten gives him a look that reads, _You’re an idiot._

“I told you, vampires can’t die,” Ten replies, sighing. “Unless you rip them limb from limb, they’re pretty much immortal.” He gets to his feet, bloody washcloth in hand, and tsks as he looks at the pool of blood staining his floor. “I’m gonna need so much bleach to clean this shit up.”

He disappears down the hallway, presumably to get more towels. Yuta is left alone with the vampire, who still hasn’t moved. Now that they were in the safety of the apartment, and inevitable death wasn’t in his near future, Yuta has a chance to look at the vampire more closely.

He had been right when noticing outside that the vampire wasn’t pale and chalky- unlike most of the stories he’d heard as a child, this one had radiant, glowing skin that looked like it should be warm to the touch, cheeks tinged just the slightest amount of pink. His hair was dark and his eyes, still wide open, were just as black, almost haunting. Yuta traces the curve of his nose, his jaw, his lips with his eyes, until they fall on the fangs peeking out of the vampires mouth.

The vampire has shown no signs of even being conscious. Yuta glances at the hallway, where Ten hasn’t returned from, before scooting just a little bit closer to the vampire. He reaches out, fingers trembling, and very gently tilts the vampire’s chin towards him.

He isn’t sure what he’d been expecting, but when the vampire’s eyes suddenly flicker towards him, finally shifting his gaze from the ceiling to Yuta’s face, he feels his heart stutter in his chest. Panic leaps into his throat, but the vampire doesn’t look like he’s going to hurt Yuta. Quite the opposite, actually.

Yuta’s fingers are still resting on the vampire’s chin, and it’s almost like he _knows_ what Yuta wants, because after a moment of staring, he very slowly opens his mouth, baring his fangs clearly for Yuta to see.

Yuta’s exhales shakily. The fangs are long and look so, so sharp. The urge to touch them is overpowering, the pearly white shine beckoning him. His fingers curl sharply around the vampire’s chin, with a little more force than he should probably use, but he doubts the vampire even feels it. He uses his thumb to reach out, running the pad of it over the tip of the fang.

The effect is instantaneous, the sharp prick of pain, and when he pulls his hand back, little drops of blood bubble to the surface. The vampire slowly closes his mouth, eyes narrowed in on Yuta’s hand, but otherwise doesn’t move towards him, or move at all.

Footsteps sound, signaling Ten returning. The vampire tilts his head back towards the ceiling, closing his eyes, and by the time the other enters the room, he’s just as still as he was when he first left.

“Help me clean this up,” Ten demands, dropping to his knees and tossing a pile of towels beside Yuta. Yuta nods, wiping off his thumb on one of the towels, and begins helping Ten mop up whatever they could of the blood. The vampire doesn’t move for the rest of the night.  

 

When Yuta wakes up in the morning, the sky is still pale, the sun barely risen. He can hear Ten snoring in his bedroom. He listens for any noise signifying the vampire was awake, or had even moved, but he hears nothing. After a few moments lying in bed trying to be as quiet as possible, he finally gets up only to feed the cat, because he can hear her meowing loudly from the kitchen.

He isn’t expecting, however, to find the vampire perched on the edge of the sofa, Ten’s cat Momo rubbing herself contentedly against his leg. Yuta watches as the vampire just stares at the cat, the frown in his brow only deepening when Momo meows loudly at him and paws at his pants.

Yuta knows he should be startled. Actually, he should be more than that- he should be terrified. But he can’t bring himself to be scared at all. The vampire just looks so normal sitting there, staring rigidly at Momo, a sharp contrast to the warm and homey feel of Ten’s apartment interior.

Yuta takes a step forward into the room from the hallway, and the moment he does, the vampire whips his head around, eyes locking in on Yuta.

For a moment, there’s a tense silence. The vampire looks ready to bolt, although the door is closest to Yuta, and it would mean he’d have to come close to Yuta to leave.

“Hello,” Yuta eventually says, as softly as he can. He presumes the vampire can speak Korean because of his call for help last night, but just to make sure, he follows up with, “You speak Korean, right?”

The vampire nods slowly.

“What’s your name?”

The vampire presses his lips together into a thin line. “Doyoung,” He finally replies. His voice is surprisingly deep and smooth, and for some reason, the hairs on the back of Yuta’s neck stand up at the sound of it.

“I’m Yuta. What part of Korea are you from?” Yuta asks. He slides down to the floor, sitting cross-legged and calling for Momo. She comes trotting over happily, rubbing herself against his sweater and purring loudly. Doyoung stares openly at her, looking a bit confused.

“Rason,” Doyoung answers. He tilts his head to the side, watching the way Momo climbs into Yuta’s lap and begins making herself comfortable, unsheathing her claws so she can massage them into his thigh. Yuta winces.

“Where is that?”

“Eight hundred and fifty seven point two kilometers northeast of Pyongyang,” Doyoung recites mechanically, eyes still on Momo. Yuta looks up quickly, shocked.

“Pyongyang?” He repeats. “You’re from North Korea?”

Doyoung nods. He points at Momo, who’s now curled into a ball in Yuta’s lap. “Why is it sitting on you?”

Yuta looks down, unconsciously petting Momo’s head gently. “What do you mean?”

“Why isn’t it scared?” Doyoung asks. “You’re much larger than it. You could kill it.”

Yuta tries not to look offended. “I wouldn’t kill her. She trusts me.”

Doyoung’s eyes flicker up and meet Yuta’s. Unlike last night, when his eyes were a deep brown color, they now shine with a slight red tint. Yuta wonders if he should take that as a warning sign. “Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why does she trust you?”

Yuta just blinks at him. What kind of question was that? “Because I take care of her, and I love her.”

“Why do you take care of her?” Doyoung asks. Yuta huffs impatiently.

“Because I love her. Why does it matter?”

Doyoung looks genuinely confused and tad concerned. “That’s not biologically safe.”

Yuta frowns. The sound of footsteps coming down the hall sounds, and both he and Doyoung turn to see Ten enter the room, rubbing his eyes sleepily. The other doesn’t even seem to notice Doyoung, yawning as he pads across the living room, until suddenly he comes to a dead halt in front of the couch.

He stares at Doyoung. Doyoung stares back at him, looking a bit nervous and like he was ready to bolt again.

“Fuck,” Ten finally says. “I was hoping last night was just a stress dream.” He looks down at the wooden floor, at the dark stain from the blood they couldn’t get out with towels and cleaner. “There’s no way I’m getting my deposit back from the landlord. She’s gonna kill me.”

“It’s Russia, there’s basically no laws here anyway,” Yuta comments. “I’m sure she’s seen blood stains before.”

Ten throws him a glare. “First of all, rude, you xenophobe. Second of all, it’s not your deposit, is it? So, shut up.”

“Me? Xenophobic?” Yuta asks in mock horror. “I’ll have you know there is a North Korean right here in your living room. Show some respect.”

Ten looks between Yuta and Doyoung, brows furrowing together, before making a _tsk_ ing noise and throwing his hands up in the air. “Fuck it, I’m not even gonna ask.” He grumbles, heading into the kitchen.

Momo purrs loudly from Yuta’s lap, stretching her legs and leaping off him so she can stroll towards her real owner.

“Traitor!” Yuta shouts dramatically after her. “I gave you everything!”

He flops over onto his side, sighing heavily. The wooden floor is cold to the touch, and he shivers through his sweats. When he rolls back over to face the couch, he almost jumps out of his skin when he finds Doyoung just a few feet away from him, now kneeling on the floor and watching him curiously.

“Uh,” Yuta clears his throat awkwardly. “Hello.”

Doyoung says nothing, just staring at him. Yuta tries to ignore him in favor of stretching out like Momo does, enjoying the satisfying crack he feels in his lower back. He squeezes his eyes shut and screws up his face as he stretches, and only snaps them open when he feels something on his neck.

It’s Doyoung’s fingers, cold and gentle. The vampire is touching the soft skin just beneath Yuta’s jaw, face blank and expressionless except for the slight furrow in his brow.

Yuta holds still, unsure what was happening. He clears his throat, and Doyoung jumps slightly, as though shocked.

“See something you like?” Yuta asks, jokingly. Doyoung’s frown deepens, and this time he presses his fingers more boldly against Yuta’s neck, the skin dipping just slightly so that Yuta feels a pressure against it. It takes Yuta moment to realize Doyoung was looking for his pulse.

He should be extremely worried. He should freeze in place when he comprehends that Doyoung, a vampire, is touching his neck, looking for a pulse point.

He isn’t. He doesn’t. For some reason, Yuta feels completely relaxed, calm and compliant as Doyoung’s fingers travel along his neck with a firm tenderness. Without thinking about it, Yuta tilts his chin back ever so slightly, giving Doyoung further access to it.

Doyoung’s eyes flash, the red in them glimmering brightly for a split second. Yuta swallows, and he can see the way Doyoung watches the bob of his Adam’s apple with sharp eyes.

Something clangs in the kitchen, and Ten calls Momo’s name and scolds her in Russian. Both Yuta and Doyoung jerk, startled back to reality. Doyoung’s hand falls to his side, and Yuta sits up quickly, face feeling overheated and flushed for reasons unknown.

 

As the day progresses, Yuta and Ten are left with the complication of figuring out what exactly to do with Doyoung. Or rather, Yuta is left to struggle with it. Ten refuses to have anything to do with the situation, disappearing early in the morning in his dancewear and thick, padded coat with a, “ _That thing better be gone by the time I come home!_ ” shouted behind him.

So, now Yuta finds himself sitting on the guest bed, watching Doyoung wander curiously through the room, occasionally touching things and being followed almost religiously by Momo. The cat had taken a liking to the vampire, and wouldn’t stop following his heels all morning, meowing anytime Doyoung so much as glanced at her. Doyoung still seemed uneasy with her, looking confused every time Yuta tried to show him how to pet her.

Yuta groans, falling back against the pillows helplessly. A quick search on his phone had showed the Ural mountains, where Ten had said most vampires in Russia hideout, were over two days away by train. How Doyoung had even managed to make it to Moscow in the first place was beyond Yuta.

The bed dips a little, and Yuta rolls over to find Doyoung perched on the edge, giving him a worried look.

“Are you okay?” Doyoung asks, voice concerned.

“I don’t know how I’m gonna get you home,” Yuta sighs, rubbing at his eyes with heels of his palms.

“Home,” Doyoung repeats.

“Yeah, home,” Yuta sits up a little too quickly, his vision dotting with spots for a second. “Are you from the Ural mountains? That’s really far and I’m broke as shit, I can’t fly us there and a train takes way too long.”

“Fly?”

“Yeah, fly. Like an airplane? Don’t tell me you don’t know what airplanes are.”

Doyoung is quiet for a moment, looking down at his hands. “Home is Rason,” He finally says in a soft voice.

Yuta can’t help but snort. “In North Korea? Good luck getting in there.”

Doyoung looks up at him, and Yuta’s heart skips a beat. The vampire looks so sad, eyes wide and shining red, mouth downturned into a small pout. Yuta has to scramble to organize his thoughts, lost in Doyoung’s eyes for a solid minute or so.

“I- uh. Where’s your family? Your mother?”

Doyoung looks down again, twisting his fingers together. “I don’t know.”

Yuta’s heart twists in his chest, and he feels bad for asking. “Well, you must’ve come from somewhere. You weren’t in Moscow your whole life.”

Doyoung’s eyes flicker up to meet his. “Are you from Moscow?”

“No,” Yuta says, laughing. “Are you kidding? It’s cold as shit here. I’m from Seoul. Well, actually, I was born in Osaka, but I live in Seoul.”

Doyoung nods as though he understands what Yuta was rambling about. Yuta’s not even sure the vampire knows where Osaka is.

They sit in silence for a few minutes, Doyoung twisting his fingers together and Yuta lost in thought, still trying to think of a way to get Doyoung safely out of the city without being stopped by police.

“Yuta,” Doyoung suddenly says in a quiet voice.

“Hmm?”

“I’m hungry.”

The bed dips as Momo hops up on it as well. Yuta is still a little behind, thinking about the Ural mountains, and so he nods in response, words flowing out of his mouth without thinking.

“Oh, yeah, sorry. I can make you ramen or something. I’m not a good cook but I know how-” Yuta stops abruptly as his brain catches up to the situation at hand. He tears his eyes away from the wall he was staring at while lost in thought, and meets Doyoung’s gaze. Doyoung looks a little guilty, chin tucked down and biting his lip. He looks like a scolded child.

“You’re… hungry,” Yuta repeats.

Doyoung nods. “I can get out of Moscow myself, but I lost a lot of blood last night. I need to feed.”

Yuta tries not to wince at the word feed. Beside him, Momo meows for attention, rubbing her head against Doyoung’s elbow.

“Do you-” Yuta can hear the words coming out of his own mouth, but he doesn’t remember telling his brain to say them. “Do you need… If you want me to, I can… help…?”

Doyoung’s head snaps up, and he searches Yuta’s face, looking doubtful. “Are you sure?”

Yuta nods, still feeling like he was having an out of body experience. “Yeah, I mean… if you’re hungry, you’re hungry. Just, like… don’t take too much?”

Yuta blinks, and he’s suddenly being pressed against the bed, Doyoung looming over him and straddling his lap. It’s almost terrifying how quickly the vampire moved, pinning Yuta down like he weighed nothing despite him being taller than Doyoung. Yuta’s heart stutters, and there’s no way Doyoung doesn’t hear it, if the way his eyes flash red once more is any indication.

“Just relax,” Doyoung whispers, voice coming out much deeper than before. He reaches down, using a firm pressure against Yuta’s jaw to jerk his head to the side so he has clear access of the other’s neck. “It won’t hurt.”

Yuta can't seem to find his voice, so he just swallows, mouth suddenly feeling dry. Doyoung leans down, nose brushing along Yuta's neck, feeling cold and foreign against the thin skin. Yuta shivers, and Doyoung bites down without anymore warning.

It hurts only a little, like getting a papercut. Yuta winces, but Doyoung keeps him in place with one hand holding both his wrists above his head and the other cupping Yuta's jaw so he can't move his head. When Doyoung starts drinking, white noise rushes through Yuta's ears. His whole body tingles, a mix between getting an electric shock when he drags his socks along a carpet and the feeling he gets when he listens to those dumb ASMR videos Taeyong is so fond of.

But underneath that, there's a thrumming, something he's never really felt before, so he can't put a name to it. Euphoria? Ecstasy? Peacefulness?

Whatever it is, it seems to simmer through him, melting away all his worries and causing him to relax completely underneath Doyoung, letting out a breathy sigh. He feels light headed, airy, almost like he was floating out of his own body.

Just like that, it's over, and he's brought back to reality by the feeling of Doyoung licking carefully at his neck. His brain is still a little slow catching up, and for a minute he tries to bare his neck even more, enjoying the silky smooth feeling of the vampire lapping at his skin, but Doyoung pulls away before he can find it in him to protest.

Doyoung looks down at him, concern etched in his face. He looks different- his eyes are a warm brown color, the red gone completely, and his skin has a slight, warm glow to it, like he went outside in the sun for awhile.

Yuta blinks up at him. Everything is coming back into focus, and he suddenly feels very, very sad, and very, very tired. He pouts unconsciously, his brain only functioning enough to scream at him _what happened to the nice feeling?!_

"Do you have any juice?" Doyoung suddenly asks, voice rich and deep. Yuta has to think about it for a second, confused.

"In the fridge, I think," He replies, and he cringes at how raspy his voice comes out.

Doyoung nods, patting him very gently on the shoulder and climbing off the bed. "Stay here. I'll be right back."

Yuta nods, too, feeling entirely too sleepy to move. Doyoung disappears out of the room, and Yuta stares up at the ceiling.

 _A vampire just drank my blood,_ He thinks to himself. Oddly enough, he can't find it in himself to worry too much over it. At the foot of the bed, Momo meows from where she's been seated this entire time, watching Yuta with big, blue eyes.

"Don't judge me," He snaps at her. Momo just stares.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> someone asked me on twitter, so for reference momo is a turkish angora cat :-)

Yuta must have fallen asleep, because what feels like moments later he’s blinking his eyes open to the ceiling. Cold air seeps through the comforter that’s been draped over him, and he shivers. The only warm part of him was his feet; he doesn’t even to look to know the pressure against them was Momo sleeping on him.

When he turns his head to the side to stretch, he almost jumps out of his own skin. Doyoung sits in a chair beside the bed, back perfectly straight and body completely still, eyelids closed as though he were asleep. His arms are crossed across his chest, and altogether the position he’s in looks very uncomfortable.

Yuta licks his lips, eyes trailing over Doyoung’s form. His skin was still as glowy as before when he first fed (which, whenever the thought passes through Yuta’s head, he feels a rush of heat rise to his cheeks). His lips were full and had some color to them, and even his eyelashes brush his cheekbones delicately.

Doyoung’s eyes open slowly, crystal clear and warm brown.

“You’re awake,” Doyoung says, slowly. Yuta shivers again, and nods.

“Yeah,” Yuta mumbles. “Why’s it so freaking cold?”

Doyoung tilts his head towards the window across the room that was thrown completely open. Yuta balks at the snowflakes that were falling inside the apartment, and immediately thinks of the ways Ten was going to strangle him for even opening the windows at all in the dead of February.

Yuta rubs his eyes with the heels of his palms. “Why’d you do that?”

“You were overheating,” Doyoung explains simply. “Your face was very red when I came back with juice for you. I think you fainted.”

Yuta sits up quickly, blood rushing from his head and making him dizzy. Doyoung’s nose twitches. “I fainted?”

Doyoung shrugs. “It happens sometimes,” He says, and Yuta can’t tell if he was imagining it, but it looked like there was the hint of a smile on the vampire’s face. “Humans are very sensitive beings.”

Yuta sputters, and he can feel himself blushing. “Shut up,” He snaps, for lack of a better response.

Doyoung’s lips curl into a smirk, and Yuta was definitely not imagining that. But it disappears when the sound of the front door slamming sounds, and Ten’s voice rings through the apartment with a, “Yuta, what the _fuck?!_ ”

 

Doyoung hovers near Yuta as the night passes. While he helps Ten sew his tights, while he cleans Momo’s litter box, while he cooks in the tiny kitchen. Doyoung is right there, a safe, reasonable arm distance away, watching Yuta quietly.

“Why’s he doing that?” Ten asks from where he’s slumped on the couch when Yuta places his dinner in front of him on the coffee table. Doyoung stands just behind Yuta, and when he sits down, Doyoung stands beside the couch like a statue. “Why’s he following you?”

Yuta shrugs, glancing at Doyoung. He meets the vampire’s eyes, and blushes again, looking away quickly. “I don’t know.”

Ten narrows his eyes, looking between the two of them, stabbing blindly at his pasta with his fork. “Did something happen?”

Yuta shakes his head, busying himself with eating his own pasta.

A few seconds later, Ten leaps to his feet, gasping so overdramatically Yuta can physically feel his heart skip a beat in shock. He points at Yuta with one finger, looking appalled.

“He fed from you!” Ten shrieks, voice too many octaves too high.

Yuta almost chokes on his food, head snapping up to look at the younger. “No!” He denies far too quickly, wincing at how obviously he gave himself away. A quick glance at Doyoung shows the vampire doesn’t seem affected by the situation at all, mostly just looking at Ten as though wondering what he was being so loud for.

Ten gives Yuta a look as though Yuta were his own disgraced child, horrified. “He really did? He fucking _fed_ from you?!”

Yuta looks down at the floor, face burning. He feels like he’s being scolded for something he knew he shouldn’t have done in the first place.

“Are you out of your goddamn mind?” Ten continues. He lets out a string of curses in Russian, running a hand through his hair. “You could’ve _died._ And you-” He spins on his heel to point accusingly at Doyoung this time. “I should report you. I should call the police right now and-”

Yuta leaps to his feet, chest twisting at just the thought of the police coming to take Doyoung away and most likely kill him. “No, you fucking won’t.”

Both of them turn to look at him, Doyoung a little surprised, and Ten shocked.

“What?” Ten laughs in disbelief, as though he couldn’t believe what was happening.

“You’re not gonna fucking call the police,” Yuta snaps through his teeth. “What’s wrong with you? You’re really that cruel a person?”

Ten’s jaw drops, offended. “Are you kidding me? He could’ve _killed_ you.”

“But he _didn’t_ ,” Yuta growls. “I’m right fucking here, and I don’t need you to tell me whether I’m okay or not.”

To his left, Yuta can feel the burn of Doyoung’s stare against the side of his cheek. He flushes at just the thought, and he tries to shake it away, instead taking a step in the opposite direction, away from both of them.

“I’m going to go,” Yuta says slowly, much to his own surprise. Ten’s expression mirrors his own, anger slipping up for a moment as he processes what Yuta had just said.

“Go?” Ten repeats.

Yuta grimaces. “Yeah. Go. I’m gonna go home. In return, don’t call the police. Just let him go, too.”

Ten furrows his brow. “But your flight isn’t for another few days…” He says, voice soft, a heavy contrast to the sharp tone he had a few seconds ago.

Yuta doesn’t say anything, mouth setting into a hard line. He picks up his dish and begins heading towards the kitchen, stomach unsettled and no longer in the mood to eat. As he crosses into the kitchen, he can hear Ten storm down the hall, his bedroom door slamming shut with a loud noise that echoes through the little apartment.

When Yuta comes back into the living room, Doyoung is still standing by the couch, staring at Yuta with big eyes. He watches Yuta pick up Ten’s plate and clean up the table, and only startles when Yuta finally snaps, “What?”

Doyoung follows him into the kitchen before replying, “You didn’t have to do that.”

“Do what?”

Doyoung gestures towards the hallway in the general direction of where Ten disappeared. “He was right to be angry. I could have killed you.”

Yuta snorts, rolling his eyes as he dumps the pasta in the trash and throws the dish in the sink. “If you wanted to kill me, you would’ve killed me.”

Doyoung’s lack of response has him looking up after a few seconds. His heart skips a beat when he finds Doyoung staring at him with a peculiar expression. It makes Yuta feel like the vampire is prying him open and peering into the inner depths of his mind. Yuta’s stomach curls tightly, and he looks away quickly, hands shaking just the slightest as he rinses the dishes and slides them into the dishwasher.

Doyoung follows him like a shadow as the night progresses, standing beside him as he brushes his teeth and even when he gets dressed for bed. Yuta flushes a bright pink as he moves to pull off his shirt and Doyoung simply stands a few feet away, watching him with that same intense gaze. Yuta clears his throat as a subtle hint to look away, but apparently vampires don’t understand social cues, because he doesn’t even blink. Yuta ends up changing in front of him anyway, skin tingling in a very prickly way as Doyoung’s eyes rake over bare skin.

“I need to go to sleep,” He eventually says, once he’s in his pajamas and sitting on the edge of his bed awkwardly. Doyoung stands by the window, and in the low lamp light, cast in shadows, looks like something out of a child’s nightmares and Yuta’s wildest dreams.

Doyoung tilts his head to the side, brow furrowing in the slightest. “So sleep,” He replies, as though it were the simplest thing in the world.  Yuta runs his hands through his hair in frustration, trying to avoid eye contact for his own sanity. He was already going to have trouble falling asleep, the ghost of Doyoung’s lips against his neck flickering through his mind over and over on loop. He didn’t need Doyoung standing in the corner of his room, watching him sleep like a creep.

“You can’t be in my room while I sleep,” Yuta finally gets out, voice cracking a little in the middle like he was going through puberty.

Doyoung looks confused. “Why?”

“Because I won’t be able to fall asleep with you nearby,” Yuta blurts out before he stops himself. His heart races in his chest, a small part of him nervous that he’d upset the vampire.

But Doyoung just looks at him, the corner of his mouth quirking up for the quickest moment as though he were enjoying an inside joke.

“Okay,” He finally murmurs. He crosses the room in two full strides, pausing in the doorway with a hand on the knob. “Sleep well, Yuta.”

 

Yuta tosses and turns for what feels like hours, mind racing with images of cool to the touch skin and sharp fangs. When he finally does manage to fall asleep for a little bit, his dreams are full of Doyoung- the vampire pressing him against the bed to feed from him again, lips trailing over Yuta’s face and eyes glittering with mirth before he sunk his teeth into his neck.

Yuta wakes with a jolt, gasping. He startles a second time when he glances up and realizes the door to his room was open, and the real reason he’d been woken was Ten whispering his name, standing in the doorway and looking small and downcast.

Yuta rubs at his eyes, confused, skin still buzzing and neck tingling from his dream. “What happened?” He mumbles, voice thick with sleep. “Are you okay?”

Ten nods, stepping into the room and closing the door behind him. He climbs into bed with Yuta, squeezing himself underneath the comforter and curling up in Yuta’s arms. Yuta feels his heartbeat start to calm, Ten’s familiar scent grounding him.

“Sorry I yelled at you,” Ten mumbles into his chest.

Yuta sifts his fingers through Ten’s short hair, smiling to himself in the dark when Ten makes a happy noise in his throat at the touch. “It’s okay. Sorry I let a vampire suck my blood.”

Ten snorts. “You’ve been in Russia too long. You’re starting to do weird things.”

Yuta shrugs, staring at the ceiling. “Yeah, it was pretty weird.”

They lay in silence for a few moments, until Ten shifts in his arms, resting his chin on Yuta’s chest so he can look up at him.

“What did it… feel like?” Ten asks quietly, eyes sparkling with curiosity.

Yuta bites his lips, mind racing immediately with the spine-tingling sensation he had gotten while Doyoung had fed from him, the way Doyoung’s lips had felt against his skin.

“It felt really good,” Yuta says, looking back at the ceiling, cheeks flushing as he admits his thoughts out loud. “It was like… this tingly feeling? When he bit me it barely even hurt, and then all of a sudden everything felt good. It felt like I was on drugs. My whole body was buzzing.”

Ten furrows his brow, looking like he was deep in thought. Then, “Did you pop a boner?”

Yuta almost chokes on his own spit. “Shut _up_.”

“I’m serious!” Ten laughs. “It sounds like you had an orgasm.”

“Forget it, you heathen,” Yuta presses his free hand to his burning face, trying to cool himself down.

Ten’s eyes light up, and he suddenly smirks, face curling into one of mirth that Yuta definitely does not like. “Oh, my god, I’m right. It turned you on.”

“You have an attractive vampire pin you down and lick at your neck and then come back and make fun of me,” Yuta snaps.

“Wait, pin you down? He was sitting on you? That means he could feel your boner against his ass.”

Yuta promptly shoves Ten off the bed.

 

When Yuta wakes up in the morning, Doyoung is gone.

He wakes up to the smell of Ten brewing coffee, and the soft shuffling of his footsteps in the kitchen. He listens for sounds of Doyoung, but just like the previous night, he can’t hear anything.

Momo meows from the foot of his bed, pawing at his blanketed foot for attention. He makes a kissing noise at her, scooping her up in his arms and climbing out of bed.

When he walks into the living room, the first thing he does is glance at the couch- for some reason, he’s expecting there to be a pillow and blanket strewn messily over it, signs that Doyoung had slept there last night (despite Yuta knowing vampires don’t sleep).

But there’s nothing there, and his heart drops just the slightest amount.

He pads into the kitchen and finds Ten leaning against the counter, sipping coffee and dressed in those skin tight dance leggings he always wears. He’s staring down at the floor, brow furrowed and lost in thought, but when Yuta enters, he glances up with a sort of reserved expression.

Yuta doesn’t say anything. They stare at each for a long, silent moment, the coffee pot behind Ten bubbling.

“He’s gone,” Ten tells him, voice quiet.

“I know,” Yuta whispers, throat catching on the words. In his arms, Momo nuzzles against his chin, purring loudly.

 

Yuta goes for a walk in the afternoon, because he doesn’t want to be alone in the quiet apartment, lost in his own thoughts- but also mostly because Ten had left his ballet shoes in his room and had called Yuta begging him to drop them off at the theater.

On his way there, he spots more of those obnoxiously neon posters that he had found a week ago, the ones warning of a vampire in the area. He almost laughs when he sees it; Doyoung was probably far, far away from Moscow now.

Yuta has only been to the Bolshoi theater a handful of times- most of them while it was packed, on opening night to see Ten perform. Vaguely, he wonders if Doyoung had ever seen the ballet perform. Probably not.

Being inside it while it was empty was overwhelming. It was so incredibly _large_ , and when he sneaks through the audience doors, seeing all the empty seats has a strange, unsettling feeling twist in his stomach.

It doesn’t help that the music playing was fast paced and felt somehow ominous, despite being obviously cheerful. A few girls were on stage, rehearsing choreography while a woman in all black with a too-tight bun shouted at them in Russian.

Yuta scans the seats, finally spotting Ten in the third row, sitting perfectly straight in his seat and watching the dancers with rapt attention. Yuta tiptoes down the aisle and slides into the seat beside him, dropping the bag with the ballet shoes into his lap.

Ten startles, as though he hadn’t even noticed Yuta approach, but once he realizes who it is he grins at him.

“Thank you,” He whispers, using one arm to give Yuta a sideways hug. “I was about to get throttled for forgetting them.”

Yuta nods, eyes now on the dancers on stage. There were four girls, arms linked together, dancing in perfect synchronization and very fast. He vaguely remembers seeing this part of the show last week when he came to opening night.

“They’re good, right?” Ten says, noticing Yuta staring. He points to the second one on the right. “She’s Korean, too. Her name’s Luna.”

“Yeah? Do you like her?” Yuta shoots back, still watching the girls feet, impressed.

Ten snorts. “She’s about as gay as you are for that vampire.”

Yuta kicks him in the ankle. Ten curses at him in Russian, mumbling something about how his legs were his money makers.

 

When it comes time for Yuta to fly home, he feels some sort of pull in his chest- like a string is tied around his heart and someone on the other end keeps tugging at it. He gives Ten a longer hug then necessary, lingering in his arms and trying to avoid thinking about going home to his empty apartment in Seoul and quiet office at work. Ten’s eyes water up as Yuta pulls away, but he bites his lip, adamantly refusing to cry.

“Call me when you get home,” Ten commands. His voice cracks a little, and it makes his words lose their authoritative tone.

Yuta nods, smiling at him. “Don’t sit alone at home until I come back, okay? Go make friends and get out of the house.”

Ten glares at him, sniffling. “I have friends other than you.”

“Doubt it,” Yuta teases. He leans in to kiss Ten on the cheek, patting him on the head. “I love you.”

Ten pouts, eyes all watery, and nods. “Love you, too.”

Yuta ends up sitting in the lounge area, waiting to board his flight, watching the people around him. How many of these people had interacted with vampires? How many of them _were_ vampires? He doubts any of them, because most vampires nowadays were in hiding, in obscure places like the Ural mountains or North Korea. Like Doyoung.

Unconsciously, he reaches up to brush his fingers against his neck. The skin is smooth, no scar or indents from where Doyoung had bitten him. He wasn’t expecting to find anything, but it still feels something like disappointment searing through his chest.

 

Taeyong and Johnny are waiting for him at the airport; Johnny leans up against the wall, sunglasses on even though they were indoors, and Taeyong bounces on the balls of his feet, peering over people’s heads searching for Yuta. When he spots him, he almost runs through the Do Not Enter area, and Johnny has to pull him back before the security guards arrest him. Yuta is finally greeted with a bone-crushing hug from Taeyong, and a strong pat on the back from Johnny.

“What’s with the sunglasses?” Yuta asks, pushing Taeyong off him and raising a brow at Johnny.

Johnny shrugs. “It’s my bodyguard look. I’m your chauffeur today,” He flashes Yuta a charming smile, hoisting the younger’s duffle back out of his arms and slinging it over his shoulder easily. Taeyong links arms with Yuta, beaming at him, looking altogether too pleased to see him.

“Did you have fun?” Taeyong asks as they begin walking towards the parking lot. He sounds like an excited mother. “Did you see Ten’s show? Did you film it? Is he doing well? He’s eating well, right?”

“Yeah, he’s good,” Yuta mumbles. He was feeling extremely tired from the flight, and on top of that, he was dreading talking about the trip with Taeyong and Johnny. Mostly because he wasn’t sure how to avoid the topic of Doyoung, but he felt strangely protective over the vampire, and didn’t want to mention him at all. “He’s making friends, I think.”

“Really?” Taeyong’s eyes sparkle. “That’s good. I talked to him last month on the phone and he sounded lonely. I think he really needed to see you.”

Yuta shrugs. “He barely had time to see me, anyway. He practices almost sixty hours a week.”

Johnny whistles as he unlocks his car, opening the trunk to throw Yuta’s bag in it. “How is he even still alive?”

“Ballerinas are very dedicated,” Taeyong says seriously.

Yuta climbs in the backseat, bones feeling heavy and tired, and listens to Taeyong prattle on about Ten and his commitment to dancing. Johnny hums as he starts up the car, nodding every so often in response. The radio starts up as well, a soft ballad drifting from the speakers.

Yuta leans his head against the window, head vibrating from the rattling of the engine. The sun was setting over the horizon, and as Johnny peels out of the airport and merges onto the highway, Yuta closes his eyes, letting images wash over him. The sun setting in Moscow, behind the old, looming churches. Ten laughing in his tiny kitchen, arms full of Momo. Sitting in a coffee shop with Ten, listening to him order espressos in Russian. The snow falling delicately outside the guest room window.

Doyoung, sitting beside his bed, watching him closely. Doyoung kneeling on the floor beside him, petting Momo. Doyoung in the dead of night, bleeding out on the cobblestone streets and baring his fangs at Yuta.

“Yuta!”

Yuta snaps to attention, just now noticing Taeyong turned around in his seat, watching him with a concerned expression.

“Huh?” He says, head feeling fuzzy.

Taeyong gives him a funny look. “I asked you a question.”

Yuta looks at Johnny in the rearview mirror for context, but he’s is giving the younger the same concerned look. “What was it?”

Taeyong bites his lip, sharp eyes making Yuta feel like the elder was peering into his soul. “Are you alright?”

Yuta nods, rubbing his eyes with the palms of his hands until spots appear behind his eyelids. “Yeah. I’m just tired.”

When they finally pull up to their apartment complex, it’s dark outside. Yuta usually appreciates the fact that Johnny and Taeyong live across the hall from him, but tonight wasn’t one of those times. Right now he really just wants to go home and lay down, and maybe not talk to anyone for a few days. He feels antsy and on edge, like he woke up on the wrong side of the bed. Like he doesn’t want to be bothered.

The other two must be able to sense his mood, because they don’t say much to him as they take the elevator to their floor. He thinks he hears Taeyong whispering something to Johnny, but he can’t be bothered to try and decipher what exactly he says.

The elevator dings, sliding open, and Yuta suddenly gets a chill. It’s like something creeps into his bones, cold and familiar. He has to grab the wall, surprised at the abrupt change in feeling from the depression that felt like it was taking over him just a few minutes ago.

Johnny notices the change, and he quickly hooks his arm around Yuta’s waist, helping him stand up straight.

“What’s wrong?” He asks. Taeyong snaps to attention, fretting like a worried mother when he sees Yuta’s confused, weak expression.

“I don’t know,” Yuta mumbles. Johnny helps him stumble out of the elevator, guiding him down the hall towards his apartment. “I was just-”

He loses his voice when he looks up. There’s someone standing beside his apartment door, back perfectly straight and still, hands clasped behind their back. They’re dressed in a long black coat, hair soft and pushed back, skin pale and glowy. At the sound of Yuta’s voice, they turn, face expressionless.

“Doyoung,” Yuta manages to whisper, before promptly fainting in Johnny’s arms.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you're interested, the dance Yuta and Ten were watching when he visited him at the theater was the Dance of the Little Swans from Swan Lake (you can watch a rendition of it here! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xd2nTXsivHs)


	3. Chapter 3

Yuta comes to to the sound of persistent, uninterrupted knocking. Someone is pressing something cold and wet against his forehead, and he blindly pushes it away, eyes fluttering open.

It takes him a minute to gather his bearings, but he finds himself in his own apartment, on the couch. Taeyong was fretting beside him, wet washcloth in hand, and Johnny was pacing beside the front door. Behind the door, someone was still knocking, incessentally, with vigor.

“Yuta,” Taeyong gasps when he notices he’s woken. He reaches out and pushes Yuta’s hair away from his face, patting his cheeks and forehead to check for signs of a fever. “You passed out in the hallway, you scared the hell out of-”

“Let him in,” Yuta manages to get out as he sits up, voice raspy. At his words, the knocking becomes twice as vigorous, so loud the neighbours could definitely here.

Taeyong and Johnny exchange worried looks, and Johnny steps forward. “Yuta, do you know-”

“Just let him in,” Yuta begs. His chest pulls once again now that he’s awake and reality is hitting him, everything rushing back to him in waves. Doyoung had been standing outside his apartment when they’d gotten home. It was clearly him who was knocking. “He’ll break the door down anyway, if you don’t.”

Taeyong looks startled, and Johnny looks hesitant, but the elder follows through anyway, carefully approaching the door and undoing all the locks slowly. 

The door practically slams open once Johnny unhinges the last lock, and sure enough, Doyoung stands in its wake, face pulled together in a scowl. He gives Johnny a deathly look, one that has the elder stepping back in surprise, before he’s striding into the apartment and towards Yuta with purpose.

Like a floodgate opening, relief spreads through Yuta’s body the closer Doyoung gets to him, the pull in his chest fading until Doyoung stands before him, and it’s gone almost completely.

“Doyoung,” Yuta whispers, unable to formulate any other thoughts. It’s almost like a shock, finding the vampire here, in Seoul, in his own apartment. He reaches out without thinking, and Doyoung drops to his knees gracefully on the carpet so that he’s eye-level with Yuta, taking Yuta’s hand in his own.

“You fainted,” Doyoung says matter-of-factly, and Yuta can’t help but laugh.

“You surprised me,” He replies.

Doyoung reaches out, hand cool and familiar when he places it not on Yuta’s cheek, but on his throat. Yuta’s heart hammers beneath the surface, skin tingling pleasantly. Behind Doyoung, Johnny lets out an uncomfortable cough. Yuta chooses to ignore him.

“How did you get here?” Yuta asks.

“I walked,” Doyoung says, like it's the easiest thing in the world.

“You  _ walked _ ?!” Taeyong chokes behind them. “From Russia?!”

Johnny gives Doyoung an incredulous look. “Did you take one of those illegal shipping boats from China?”

Doyoung blinks at him. “I walked through China and the North.”

Taeyong’s eyes look like they're going to pop out of his head. “You  _ walked  _ through  _ North Korea _ ?!”

“Did you go to Rason?” Yuta asks, remembering Doyoung’s forlorn look when he had asked the vampire where home was.

Doyoung gives him an almost sad look. “Nobody is there anymore.”

“Oh,” Yuta breathes out. He reaches up to grip Doyoung’s wrist where his hand was still resting on Yuta’s cheek. “I'm sorry.”

“No,  _ I'm  _ sorry,” Taeyong says suddenly. “Who exactly are you? And how did you casually walk through all of North Korea? From Russia?”

Doyoung glances at Yuta, slowly lowering his hand. He looks at him for a long moment, and the silence stretches out for what feels like eternity, the hairs on the back of Yuta’s neck standing up the longer he stares back at him.

“I owe a life debt,” Doyoung finally says, simply.

Johnny’s gaze flickers from Doyoung to Yuta, and understanding flashes over his face. “Ah,” He says quietly.

“What?” Taeyong demands, still clearly at a loss.

“He’s a vampire,” Johnny explains, eyes trained on Doyoung now.

Taeyong’s face drains of all color. Yuta is quick to jump to Doyoung’s defense.

“He’s not dangerous,” He says. “He won’t hurt you.”

Johnny gives him a pointed look. “He almost broke the door with his knocking.”

“Don’t be dramatic. He was just worried.”

Taeyong, who had slowly inched closer to Johnny as they spoke, peeks around Johnny’s shoulder at Doyoung. “Should I call the police?”

“No!” Yuta shouts, making the other two humans jump. Yuta throws protective arms around Doyoung in his haste, pulling the vampire's head against his chest like a child. “You're just like Ten! Why are you so quick to call the police?”

Johnny purses his lips. “Ten knows about him?”

Yuta glares at him. “Of course. He stayed with us.”

“Oh my God, did it eat Momo?” Taeyong gasps.

“I would never hurt Momo,” Doyoung murmurs from Yuta’s arms. “She is an extremely beautiful and intelligent creature.”

“He wouldn't hurt anyone,” Yuta whispers, tightening his arms around the vampire. “He’s gentle.”

Yuta misses the look Doyoung gives him, but Johnny doesn't. The elder suddenly tugs on Taeyong’s wrist. “We should go.”

Taeyong looks appalled. “And leave him here with it?”

Johnny nods as Yuta glares at Taeyong. “ _ He’s _ not a thing.”

Johnny gives Yuta a look as he ushers Taeyong towards the front door that says,  _ keep your mouth shut. _

Before closing it, Johnny holds the front door all the way open so Yuta can see the outside of it. There's a large, circular indent in it, wood splintering out from the center.

“Like I said,” Johnny adds as they step out. “He almost broke the door.”

The door closes behind them with a gentle click, a stark contrast to the way Doyoung had practically thrown it open. Yuta is left in silence, still cradling Doyoung to his chest, staring at the door with his thoughts swirling.

They stay like that for a few moments, if only because Yuta has spaced out and is still trying to comprehend how Doyoung had almost splintered his door in half. Finally, Doyoung clears his throat, murmuring. “Yuta.”

Yuta looks down, startled out of his thoughts, and flushes, releasing his hold on Doyoung. In the back of his mind, he has a brief thought that Doyoung could’ve gotten out of his hold with complete ease if he really wanted to. He brushes it off.

Now that they’re alone, the intense piercing of Doyoung’s gaze makes Yuta’s skin prickle. He shivers without thinking, and Doyoung follows the movement of his spine with his eyes.

“I’ve missed you,” Doyoung says quite suddenly. Yuta’s voice catches in his throat and he swears his heart skips a beat. He presses his palms to his cheeks, which suddenly felt too hot. 

“I missed you, too,” Yuta mumbles, avoiding eye contact. Before he can think of anything else to break the silence, his stomach rumbles loudly. Both he and Doyoung look down at it. 

“You’re hungry,” Doyoung says, again with such matter-of-fact concern, looking back up.

Yuta can’t find it in himself to laugh, still feeling scrutinized by Doyoung’s gaze. “Yeah. I should eat something.”

He rises to his feet, and Doyoung immediately stands as well. When Yuta heads towards the kitchen, Doyoung follows. Yuta pauses on his way there when he notices his luggage by the door, and he groans a little.

“What’s wrong?” Doyoung asks, hovering a little too close behind him.

“Nothing. I’m too tired to unpack tonight,” Yuta replies, half to himself. He continues into the kitchen, and this time Doyoung stops in the doorframe, watching Yuta move about with a calculated precision. 

It’s only once Yuta has put rice in the cooker and is waiting for it to ding that he notices Doyoung standing there like a statue. “What are you doing?”

Doyoung looks up from where he had been staring at the rice cooker with fascination. “Hm?” 

“Why are you just standing there?”

Doyoung licks his lips before responding, and the tiniest flash of his fangs that Yuta sees when he does so has the human’s heart skipping a beat. There’s no doubt in his mind that Doyoung can hear it.

“You’re tired,” Doyoung finally replies. “And hungry.”

“Yes, I think we’ve established that,” Yuta says, just as confused as ever. Doyoung’s gaze flickers over Yuta’s whole body, coming to rest on his collar bones, and Yuta can’t help but reach up to touch them. Doyoung follows the movement with his eyes hungrily.

The tension is broken when the rice cooker dings, and Yuta almost jumps out of his skin. Doyoung looks up to meet his eyes.

“Eat first,” Doyoung murmurs, and the tone he has could almost be confused for a command. Yuta nods anyway, opening the rice cooker and letting the steam rise up, scooping out a bowl for himself. He dumps sauce he finds in his cabinet on it (he genuinely has no idea what it is, but he’s too hungry to bother checking), and sits down at the kitchen table to dig in.

As he eats, Doyoung moves slowly towards him, each step careful, like he’s afraid Yuta’s going to startle if he moves too fast. Yuta watches him with a brow raised and mouth full of rice, slightly amused and still just as confused. By the time Yuta finishes his rice, Doyoung has placed himself gracefully onto the chair across from Yuta’s. Yuta looks up from his bowl and Doyoung is just sat there, watching him, hands folded politely on the table in front of him.

“What’s a life debt?” Yuta finally asks, just to break the silence again.

“I owe you my life,” Doyoung says, simply.   
“Yeah, but what does it mean?” 

“Anything you want,” Doyoung replies immediately. “I will do anything for you.”

Yuta can’t help but snort. “Even die for me?”

Doyoung’s eyes are serious and dark, and the smile is wiped of Yuta’s face when the vampire says in a quiet voice, “If you want me to die for you, I’ll die for you.”

Yuta’s chest tightens up like it had been for the past few days since Doyoung had left. His voice gets caught in his throat, and he has to take a moment to drink some water and gather his thoughts, Doyoung still watching him with those dark eyes. The idea that there was a vampire, one of the most dangerous and hunted creatures to ever exist, ready to give his own life for Yuta’s gives him a sudden rush of power that goes straight to his head.

“Are you hungry?” Yuta says, leaning back in his chair slightly.

Doyoung snaps to attention, back straightening. He gives Yuta an unsure look, but nods anyway.

“Do you want to feed?” The words almost catch in Yuta’s throat again, but the sudden rush of confidence he gets from the way Doyoung’s eyes slide from deep brown to vivid red within seconds has it coming back just as strong.

Doyoung’s hands tighten from where they’re folded in front of him, knuckles turning white with what appears to be restraint. Doyoung nods again, apparently unable to form words, and Yuta is impressed with how well the vampire was holding himself back. 

Yuta tilts his head back, exposing his throat, and Doyoung’s whole body goes rock solid, his jaw tightening so much Yuta can hear it clicking. But still, Doyoung doesn’t make a move, doesn’t come near Yuta at all. It takes a few seconds for Yuta to realize why, and it probably feels like years for the vampire.

“Oh, do you want consent?” Yuta asks dumbly, his whole confidence act dropping the minute he realizes he was basically torturing Doyoung by not giving him explicit permission to feed. Doyoung’s eyes flash, and he gives another curt nod, nostrils flaring.

Yuta stretches his arms above his head, throwing his head back fully so his throat is completely open, and laughs, half to himself, over the absurdity of the situation.

“Come and get it,” He says dramatically.

He was expecting Doyoung to move fast, but he had forgotten just  _ how  _ fast vampires can move. Within a millisecond of the words leaving his mouth, the table creaks heavily, and Doyoung is suddenly in his lap. One hand slides up to cup Yuta’s cheek, and the other forces itself under Yuta’s chin, holding his head back and in place so his neck stays exposed.

Yuta’s heart skips a beat as Doyoung scents along his neck, settling on an area of his throat just below his adams apple. Having Doyoung so close, his hands on Yuta’s face and his mouth on his skin, has that tightness in Yuta’s chest unraveling. Doyoung hasn’t even bitten into him yet and Yuta already felt more comfortable than he has since the vampire had disappeared in Moscow.

Doyoung’s fangs sink into him without any warning, and Yuta can’t help the little gasp he lets out. Doyoung’s knees on either side of Yuta’s thighs keep him locked in place, and his arms drop uselessly at his sides, only having enough strength to grab hold of the hem of Doyoung’s shirt weakly. 

That feeling of ecstasy Yuta had been dreaming of comes rushing back, and fuck, it was even better than he remembered. Vaguely, he can feel Doyoung’s throat working against his collar bones as the vampire swallows his blood, but even that realization doesn’t shock Yuta out of his high.

“Doyoung,” Yuta manages to get out, warbled and a little broken, and Doyoung groans into his skin, fangs retracting and sliding out of Yuta’s throat. Yuta can’t even protest, not when the vampire almost immediately begins licking at the bite marks, his tongue soothing a sting Yuta didn’t even realize he had.

Doyoung licks at his throat for longer than Yuta remembers him doing last time, his tongue flattening out over Yuta’s skin and sliding all the way up to the tip of his chin, over and over like clockwork. Yuta lets him, mostly because his bones feel like they’ve melted and he can’t find any energy to speak, let alone move. 

When Doyoung pulls back, he looks a little alarmed at Yuta’s drugged out expression. “Are you alright?”

Yuta nods, trying his best to give the vampire a thumbs up. “Great. Never been better,” Yuta lets his hand flop back down beside him. “I can’t feel any of my limbs.”

Doyoung almost smiles at him, lips quirking up. Much to Yuta’s surprise, he leans down to press the slightest of kisses to Yuta’s throat.

“I took a lot,” Doyoung murmurs, his voice deep and reverberating in Yuta’s chest. Yuta shivers, and Doyoung reaches up to stroke at Yuta’s hair gently. “You’re probably going to faint again.” 

“Stop making me faint,” Yuta commands weakly. “It’s already happened twice.”

Doyoung makes a noise that sounds like a laugh. “I’m sorry.”

Yuta grumbles to himself. He can’t find it in him to actually be upset, although he really can’t feel any of his limbs, mostly because Doyoung was still in his lap and felt like a boulder. “Can you at least bring me to my room? I don’t think I can stand up.”

Doyoung hums, gracefully unfolding himself and getting to his feet. With an almost practiced ease, he scoops Yuta up into his arms bridal style, carrying him like he weighed nothing out of the kitchen and down the hall.

“Wow, my heart is swooning,” Yuta says in a monotone voice, trying to cover up the actual pounding of his heart that Doyoung can most definitely hear. Doyoung smiles at him again.

When the vampire finally deposits him into his bed, Yuta has never been happier to be there. He spreads his limbs out, sighing in content. Doyoung stands beside the bed, watching him with an unreadable expression. 

“Fuck yeah, this is great,” Yuta mumbles to himself, eyes already drifting closed. He hears more than sees Doyoung snort, and his footsteps moving away from the bed.

Panic sets in so quickly Yuta’s eyes fly open, and his heart squeezes in his chest. He lurches forward, grabbing Doyoung’s wrist with such conviction he surprises even himself.

“You’re not gonna leave again, right?”

Doyoung’s face softens considerably, and he gently pulls Yuta’s hand off his wrist, instead taking it in both of his own. He drops to his knees slowly, so that he’s at eye level with Yuta.

“I did not just walk through all of North Korea just to leave you,” Doyoung says, voice firm and sincere, holding eye contact. Yuta would laugh if he wasn’t so anxious, but Doyoung’s words definitely calm him a little. He rolls onto his side so he can keep his eyes on the vampire, which proves to be a difficult task as exhaustion creeps into his bones once again.

“Don’t leave,” Yuta whispers, eyelids drooping despite his best efforts. Doyoung just watches him, gently squeezing Yuta’s hand between his own. “That’s an order.”

As he succumbs to the sleepiness tugging at his eyes, Yuta vaguely hears Doyoung laughing quietly to himself. 


	4. Chapter 4

Yuta can’t sleep.

True to his word, Doyoung did not leave. Yuta had gotten maybe an hour or more of sleep, before waking up with a jolt to find Doyoung still kneeled beside him gracefully, hands still holding Yuta’s gently, and eyes trained on Yuta’s face. For a split second, Yuta forgets who he is, and almost proceeds to shit his pants because there was some random person in his apartment. It all comes back to him when Doyoung sees he’s awake, and he gives him the smallest of smiles.

Now Yuta is just laying here, trying to avoid making eye contact with Doyoung and _trying_ to fall back asleep. But it was a little hard when a vampire was less than a foot away from his face, and he could physically feel his gaze boring into the side of his neck.

“What time is it?” Yuta eventually asks, eyes closed and laying flat on his back.

“Approximately two in the morning,” Doyoung replies, voice cool and low.

Yuta sighs heavily to himself. “I don’t think I can sleep with you here,” He admits, opening his eyes and tilting his head to finally look at Doyoung.

Doyoung’s brow furrows. “You told me not to leave.”

“I know.”

“It was an order.”

Yuta snorts, half amused and half concerned that Doyoung had taken his words so seriously. “I know. But I can’t sleep with you watching me. So…. get out,” He twists his fingers together awkwardly, quickly tacking onto the end, “But don’t leave the apartment.”

Doyoung quirks a brow but says nothing, instead unfolding himself and rising to his feet. Before closing the door behind him as he leaves, he pauses and murmurs, “Sleep well, Yuta,” his lips curling around the edges into a smirk.

The door closes and Yuta resists the urge to scream into his pillow. _Bastard._

 

The next morning, when Yuta’s alarm goes off at seven am sharp, he’s so startled by the sound he leaps out of bed and dives into his morning routine. It’s been almost two weeks since he had taken left to go to Russia, so he wasn’t as organized as he usually is. He throws open his bedroom door like a man on a mission, diving for the kitchen to turn on the coffee maker so he could shower while it brewed. In the living room, Doyoung looks up from where he had been sitting on the couch, looking alarmed at Yuta’s disheveled appearance.

“You’re still here,” Yuta says out loud once he’s gathered his bearings, a sense of relief suddenly flooding him at the realization.

Doyoung nods. “Of course.”

Yuta tries not to smile stupidly, enjoying the sight of Doyoung sitting on his old grey couch, looking very out of place. It’s similar to the morning after he had saved him in Moscow, when he walked out of Ten’s guest room to find Doyoung sitting on the couch and watching Momo meow at his feet.

“Did you sleep well?” Doyoung asks sincerely. Yuta can feel his cheeks flushing, but he’s not sure why. He nods quickly, turning on his heel and dashing towards the bathroom to save face.

Doyoung stays seated on the couch as Yuta plows through his morning routine, showering and throwing back two cups of coffee like water. When he’s finally seated at the kitchen table to eat breakfast, Doyoung slinks over, looking like a curious child, and takes the seat directly next to Yuta.

“What’s that?” He asks, peering into Yuta’s bowl of rice and raw eggs.

“It’s breakfast,” Yuta mumbles through a mouthful of food. “It’s more popular in Japan, though. Johnny makes fun of me for eating raw eggs.”

Doyoung nods as though he understands, but he still stares at the eggs like they’re a foreign object. He watches as Yuta eats, sharp eyes following the spoon from the bowl to Yuta’s lips, watches the way Yuta’s throat works when he swallows. Yuta tries not to think too hard about it and avoids his gaze as best he can.

When Yuta is finally pulling on his shoes and coat, Doyoung stands in the hall, and if Yuta didn’t know any better, he’d say the vampire was pouting.

“I have to go to work,” Yuta says in an apologetic voice, just because Doyoung was giving him such a sullen look he felt bad about having to leave.

Doyoung eyes the scarf Yuta wraps around his neck as though it had personally offended him.

“I can’t… I have to work,” Yuta explains. “I’m sorry.”

Doyoung blinks at him, lips pressed together in a thin line.

Yuta throws his hands up in the air in defeat. He definitely should never have kids, because he clearly caves at the simplest of gestures. “Fine! Come with me! But if we run into Johnny, you’re fucked.”

 

They arrive at Yuta’s work with no incidents of significance, except when Yuta pushed Doyoung onto the crowded subway car and Doyoung looked like he was going to have a full blown panic attack because he’d been thrown into a packed metal box that moved at 80 miles an hour underground. When they’d resurfaced at Yuta’s stop, Doyoung had thrown himself up the stairs like he hadn’t seen daylight in years, gasping for breath. Yuta couldn’t help rolling his eyes, mumbling, _“Drama queen,”_ under his breath, snorting at the glare Doyoung shoots at him, face red.

Just as Yuta had anticipated, the moment he swings open the heavy glass doors to the building, Johnny is there. He’s talking with one of the interns, Donghyuck, by the elevators, nursing a tray of coffees and looking altogether too chipper for so early in the morning.

Yuta groans to himself, hooking his arm around Doyoung’s and dragging the vampire towards the stairs. Doyoung follows easily, not even questioning, until-

“Yuta!”

Yuta whips around to glare at Sicheng, who was also far too lively for early morning. Why was everybody in this office so damn cheerful?

Johnny looks up at Sicheng’s call, and Yuta is caught red-handed, standing awkwardly in the middle of the marble lobby with Doyoung on his arm and Sicheng jogging over to him, arms full of papers. Johnny narrows his eyes at Doyoung, but luckily, says and does nothing.

Sicheng skids to a halt in front of them, panting from the effort of running across the lobby. He puts his hands on his knees, huffing dramatically.

“How was Russia?” The younger asks between deep breaths.

“It was great,” Yuta mutters, glancing quickly at Doyoung. The vampire was watching Sicheng curiously. Yuta tries not to think about how they didn’t have to keep their arms locked anymore, but Doyoung clings to him anyway.

“Oh, hi,” Sicheng says, finally noticing Doyoung. He wipes his palm on his pants and holds out his hand for Doyoung. “I don’t believe we’ve met! Are you a new intern? I’m Sicheng.”

Doyoung stares at Sicheng’s hand. He stares at it for so long, in fact, that it becomes extremely uncomfortable, and Sicheng shifts from foot to foot nervously, glancing at Yuta for an explanation.

To break the tension, Yuta grabs hold of Doyoung’s wrist and holds it out to slap at Sicheng’s hand. “Say hello, you freak.”

Doyoung blinks. “Hello,” He says, face completely void of emotion.

Sicheng looks around as though he wasn’t sure if this was a practical joke or not. Yuta clears his throat awkwardly.

“This is my cousin from, uh, Jeju,” Is the best Yuta can come up with on the spot. “His name is Doyoung.”

“Jeju?” Sicheng repeats, looking uncertainly between them. “But I thought your family is from Osak-”

“Well, it’s been nice chatting with you, Sicheng!” Yuta interrupts him loudly, steering Doyoung towards the elevator. “Gotta go, you know, the newspaper doesn’t edit itself!”

Inside the elevator, Yuta lets out a sigh of relief once the doors close and they’re left alone. He sags against the wall, sighing heavily.

“That man was nice,” Doyoung says suddenly.

“Yeah, he’s a nice kid,” Yuta replies, closing his eyes and leaning his back against the wall. “He got hired last year, he’s really eager to-”

With a sudden realization, Yuta snaps his head forward, aware that he had just been exposing his throat openly to Doyoung. When he looks, Doyoung is watching him with dark eyes, stock still.

“Sorry,” Yuta whispers, heartbeat pounding in his chest.

Doyoung gives him a curt little nod the same time the elevator dings and the doors open on their floor.

 

Doyoung stays quiet most of the day, sitting beside Yuta as he works. The vampire seems more interested in watching Yuta than watching his work, which Yuta wouldn’t mind so much if he couldn’t feel Doyoung’s eyes boring into the side of his neck for hours on end.

A few people stop by his office throughout the morning, mostly to drop off some articles that need editing or papers for Yuta to sign. Only a few ask about Doyoung, and none of them even question Yuta having family in Jeju (curse Sicheng and his acute awareness for detail).

Around two o’clock, just as Yuta’s stomach is starting to rumble from hunger, Johnny comes storming into his office with a bottle of wine, locking the door behind him and slamming the bottle and two paper cups on Yuta’s desk.

“A little early to get shit faced, isn’t it?” Yuta asks, barely glancing up from his work. It wasn’t wine, it was a fancy champagne. Probably a gift from a client or donor that Johnny didn’t have the heart (or self-control) to decline.

“Yeah, well, I deserve it,” Johnny grumbles. He gives Doyoung a hesitant look before settling into the seat beside him. “Do you drink?”

It takes both Yuta and Doyoung a moment to realize Johnny was talking to the vampire. Both of them look at him, Yuta more surprised than Doyoung. Johnny clears his throat, a little uncomfortably.

“Alcohol tastes like poison,” Doyoung says slowly, eyeing the bottle with clear disgust. “It does nothing for me.”

“That’s valid,” Johnny replies, before he pops the bottle and begins pouring himself a cup. The loud noise it makes startles Doyoung, making him jump in his seat. “Yuta?”

Yuta drops his pen, stretching his arms above his head and cracking his neck. “I’d never turn down the opportunity to drink at work.”

Doyoung watches them both cheers and down half their cups in one go with interest, eyeing the way Yuta’s throat works when he swallows. Yuta winces at the burn of alcohol, and he swears Doyoung gives him a smug smirk at that.

“What’s the occasion?” Yuta asks, picking up his pen again.

Johnny shrugs, tilting his cup back and forth and letting the champagne shift inside it. “I don’t know. I had to write like, seven fucking articles today, and Junmyeon won’t leave me alone about some source I got wrong on an article from _three months ago.”_

“Life is hard for you, isn’t it, big boy?” Yuta simpers teasingly, knowing Johnny would get angry from the nickname. He had once heard Taeyong call the elder that while they were at dinner, when Yuta  was coming back from the bathroom and both of them thought he wasn’t within earshot. That was two years ago, and he still hasn’t let them live it down.

Johnny turns bright red and almost chokes on his drink. “Fuck you!” He glares at Yuta while the younger tries not to cry with laughter, cheeks flushed. “At least I don’t have a vampire fetish!”

Yuta actually does choke on his own laugh. “I don’t have a vampire fetish!” He practically shouts, and he can feel a blush creeping up his neck similar to Johnny’s.

Doyoung looks between them, amused, as they both flush and glare at each other. “In Russia, a vampire fetish is called любовь к опасности.”

Yuta forgoes the fact that Doyoung seems to know what a fetish is and instead shoots him a despairing look. “I have no idea what you just said to me.”

“That sounded like gibberish,” Johnny agrees. “How does Ten know how to speak that fluently?”

“Ten also speaks Thai and that sounds like gibberish to you, too,” Yuta points out. “I think you’re just a dumbass.”

Johnny gives him an offended look. “I did not come here to be roasted. If I wanted that, I would’ve gone home to Taeyong,” He begins getting up from his seat, taking the champagne bottle with him.

“Aw, come on, don’t be mad, big boy,” Yuta says, grinning from ear to ear. Johnny throws his empty paper cup at Yuta’s head, and the younger has to duck to avoid it.

“Wait!” Yuta calls after Johnny. “We’re still getting dinner tonight, right!? I don’t have any food at home! Don’t you dare starve me out!”

 

It’s tradition that Yuta, Johnny, and Taeyong go out for dinner on Wednesday nights and get absolutely shit faced for no reason other than to drink during the week.

It started in college when Yuta had convinced Johnny to come to a gay club with him on a Wednesday despite the fact Johnny had a final the next morning. Johnny had bitched and moaned, but when the night was done, Johnny had met Taeyong and taken him home, and when the morning rolled around, Johnny ended up acing his final. They took it as a sign from the gods that their Wednesday night drinking fest was meant to be, and was essentially a good luck charm.

Now Yuta sits cross legged beside Doyoung at their usual restaurant, pouring himself soju and trying not to notice the way Taeyong is openly staring at Doyoung with what could only be described as uneasiness. Yuta only scolds him when Johnny asks Taeyong to pass him the pickled radish and Taeyong proceeds to drop the entire plate onto the grill because he was too busy watching Doyoung to pay attention.

“Knock it off,” Yuta snaps, trying to save what was left of the charred radish from the flames. “You’re being weird.”

“Sorry,” Taeyong says, although he doesn’t sound sorry at all. “It’s just… freaky.”

“Yeah, we get it, you’re a scaredy cat,” Yuta grumbles. “He’s literally just sitting here, he’s not doing anything.”

Taeyong glares at Yuta. “I’m not scared.”

Doyoung leans forward suddenly, the movement quick and graceful, resting his chin in his hands, elbows on the table so he’s significantly closer to Taeyong’s face. “You’re not scared?” He asks, voice silky smooth.

Taeyong freezes, and even Johnny pauses his chewing to look apprehensively at the vampire. Doyoung lets his eyes trace over Taeyong’s features, traveling down his face and resting on the elder’s throat. Yuta can practically see Taeyong’s eyes shaking with terror.

Yuta snorts, and the tension is broken immediately. He pulls gently at Doyoung’s elbow, and the vampire pulls back, settling back into his cushion.

“Stop teasing him,” Yuta says, grinning at the sly smile Doyoung shoots him. “He’s a crybaby.”

“That wasn’t funny,” Johnny says in his grumpiest dad voice, giving both Yuta and Doyoung a disapproving look.

“Don’t be such a bore, big boy,” Doyoung says, lifting his glass of water to take a sip, and Yuta absolutely loses his shit.

 

The night passes without any other incidents, and by the time midnight rolls around, all of them except Doyoung are pleasantly drunk. Johnny and Taeyong were cooing at each other stupidly, Taeyong making kissy noises at Johnny like a child and playing with his hair.

Yuta was so drunk the room was starting to spin, and he tries his best to refocus, squeezing his eyes shut and letting himself tip to the side, head coming to fall on Doyoung’s shoulder.

“Stop staring at me,” He mumbles without opening his eyes.

“Hm?” Doyoung hums back.

“I can feel you staring at me. Your eyes are like lasers,” Yuta says. “Pew, pew.”

Doyoung chuckles. Yuta smiles to himself.

“You’ve drank a lot,” Doyoung says. “Are you feeling alright?”

Yuta shrugs. “I mean, I could be better. But this is nice,” Without thinking, he reaches out and wraps his arms around Doyoung’s waist, snuggling closer to him. “This works.”

Doyoung is warm in comparison to the other times Yuta’s touched him, and he thinks that’s more due to the thick black sweater Yuta had lent him before they went out. Yuta’s heart picks up tenfold when Doyoung shifts, putting his arm around Yuta’s shoulder so he could hold him close.

“You’re going to feel sick in the morning,” Doyoung tells him, and Yuta can’t help but feel like a chastised kid.

“Whatever,” Yuta grumbles. “I’m invincible. Alcohol can’t fuck with me.”

Yuta opens his eyes to find Doyoung smiling fondly at him, eyes soft. Yuta shivers, but it has nothing to do with the cold. Doyoung’s face was much closer now, his mouth just a few inches away, and for a moment, Yuta wonders what it would be like to feel the vampire’s lips against his own.

“Your heart is beating very loudly,” Doyoung suddenly murmurs, and Yuta curses him and his hyper-aware vampire senses in his head. “Are you nervous?”

“A little,” Yuta mumbles, hiding his face in Doyoung’s chest.

“I’m not going to feed from you, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Doyoung says, voice soothing despite what he was saying.

Yuta shoots him a confused look. “What? No, I wasn’t even thinking of that.”

Doyoung blinks at him, and a second later looks away, almost embarrassed. Yuta bets if Doyoung was still alive, he would be blushing.

“Were _you_ thinking about feeding from me?” Yuta asks curiously.

Doyoung shakes his head, avoiding eye contact by instead staring at Taeyong, who was slowly working on the buttons of Johnny’s shirt while the elder waved his hands away, mumbling something about being indecent.

“I wasn’t,” Doyoung finally says, when it seems he’s found his voice again. “What were you thinking about that made you so nervous?”

“You,” Yuta replies simply, too drunk to have a filter from his brain to his mouth.

“Me?” Doyoung repeats, a small smile curling his lips. Yuta notices he has the faintest dimple on his right cheek. Cute.

“Yeah. You’re really cute, did you know?”

Doyoung presses his lips together to stop himself from laughing, eyes curving upwards. “I’ve been told.”

“Alright, you narcissist,” Yuta grumbles. “Don’t ruin the moment.”

“So, you were thinking about how I’m cute and that made your heart beat fast?” Doyoung asks.

Yuta lets go of Doyoung to pull back, pressing his palms against his cheeks. His face felt flushed and overheated. “No. I was also thinking about kissing you.”

He keeps his eyes down, feeling a little embarrassed despite not being able to stop the words from coming out. After a few seconds of dreadful silence, Doyoung speaks.

“You want me to kiss you?” The vampire asks, voice calm and collected. Yuta looks up to find Doyoung staring at him, no change in facial expression. A small part of Yuta had been worried the other would be disgusted, for some reason.

“Will you?” Yuta counters back, trying to avoid the question.

Doyoung suddenly rolls up his sleeves, and without warning, reaches out to brush the bangs out of Yuta’s face. Yuta freezes up, heart picking up momentum and blood rushing in his ears and making everything else sound like white noise as Doyoung leans closer and closer, hands coming up to cup Yuta’s face.

“I would do anything for you,” Doyoung whispers, nose brushing Yuta’s as he tilts his head to accommodate the angle they’re at. “All you had to do was ask.”

Yuta wants to protest, because hold on a second, that’s kind of messed up logic, but Doyoung is kissing him and Yuta is promptly melting in the vampire’s arms. If Doyoung feeding from him felt good, Doyoung kissing him was the greatest pleasure in the universe. Yuta’s heart pounds like a drum in his chest, hands shaking visibly as he reaches up to grab Doyoung’s sweater and keep him close. Doyoung’s lips are soft and smooth, and they slide over Yuta’s own with ease, the kiss deep and intimate. Yuta keeps trying to remind himself they’re in a public restaurant (it had dividers between the tables, but still), but it wasn’t really doing much for him. He never, ever, _ever,_ wants to stop kissing Doyoung.

At this thought, Doyoung pulls back. Yuta’s eyes flutter open and his stomach flips at the dark look in Doyoung’s eyes, the vampire’s lips as red as they could get (which wasn’t much). Yuta clutches Doyoung’s sweater just to have something to ground himself, feeling like he was floating down from a high he didn’t even realize he was on.

“Hey, don’t be gross,” Taeyong suddenly slurs, and they both turn to find the younger watching them. Johnny was passed out beside him, the wall the only thing holding him up. “Just act natural, we have to finish eating.”

Doyoung pulls away, his casual composure returning much faster than Yuta’s ever could. “You finished eating almost an hour ago, you drunken fool,” He replies smoothly. He hands Taeyong his glass of water, frowning at him like a disapproving mother. “Drink this.”

Yuta turns towards the wall as he tries to pull himself together, smoothing down his hair and patting his cheeks. He feels like a bucket of ice cold water was dumped over his head, the alcohol suddenly not enough to swirl his mind and distract him from his thoughts about the vampire. Now that he’s kissed him, he doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to forget it.

He turns back, hoping he looks as normal as possible, and shoots Taeyong a smile, instead trying to focus on waking Johnny’s plastered ass up to get him into a cab.   



	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter was written to the song madness by muse, so if you'd like the full effect, feel free to [listen to it here.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mq9zhpBweDk)

 Even in the cab ride home, Yuta’s skin prickles from Doyoung’s phantom touch. Through the whole ride, through being squished between Johnny and Taeyong in the backseat while they tried to kiss around him, to being hauled up into his building and the elevator by Doyoung like he weighed nothing (which, if he were being honest, made his stomach flip at the way the vampire lifted him out of the cab like it was the easiest thing), to finally making it back to his apartment, his spine tingles thinking about Doyoung’s kiss.

He wanted more. He wanted so much more. And with the way the soju was fogging his mind and making it just a little difficult to stand up, he was becoming hellbent on getting what he wanted.

He collapses on his living room floor spread eagle the minute Doyoung ushers him inside. His carpet has never felt so warm and inviting, and he rolls around on it, sighing in content. Doyoung moves silently around him, footsteps quiet, so when Yuta rolls onto his back and opens his eyes, the vampire is just above him, looking down at him with that same fond look from earlier.

Without thinking, Yuta blurts out, “Have you ever fucked someone while you fed from them?”

Doyoung blinks at him, expression blank, and it takes a second for him to respond. “No,” He answers, finally.

“Do you think it would feel good?” Yuta asks. He twists his hips down towards the carpet, suddenly feeling like he had an itch he couldn’t scratch. Doyoung follows the movement sharply, nostrils flaring.

“I’m sure it would,” Doyoung says, voice tight and clipped.

Yuta rolls his head back so his neck is exposed, looking at Doyoung upside down. Doyoung’s eyes flash red, and Yuta gets the sudden urge to whine. In this position, he feels like an animal submitting to a predator, and he fucking  _ loves  _ it.

“Kiss me again,” Yuta demands, no longer having the patience to ask politely, especially when he knows Doyoung will do whatever he requests.

Doyoung drops to his knees gracefully, the thudding noise making Yuta wince, but Doyoung doesn’t look perturbed at all. Instead, he watches Yuta darkly, that red film slipping over his irises slowly, expression almost thoughtful would it not be for the look in his eyes.

“Are you sure?” Doyoung asks, which surprises Yuta, but then, “I won’t be able to stop.”

Yuta nods, throat working as he swallows his nerves. “Kiss me again,” He repeats, voice quieter this time.

Doyoung leans down at this, wasting no time, pausing for just a moment to breathe out, “Okay,” against Yuta’s lips, before he’s kissing him.

The angle is awkward, because Yuta is still looking at him upside down, and Doyoung is kneeling at the crown of Yuta’s head, but it still makes Yuta feel like a gasoline fire has lit up in his veins. Doyoung slides his hands over Yuta’s jaw to hold him in place, long fingers curling tightly as though they were going to pierce into his neck.

Yuta whimpers a little, mostly because even upside down Doyoung can make a kiss seem like the best thing in the world, but then Doyoung pulls back just slightly, so their lips are centimeters away and barely touching. 

“Am I hurting you?” Doyoung asks. His eyes are open when Yuta opens his own, bright red and closer then Yuta had ever thought he’d be to a vampire’s eyes.

“No,” Yuta manages to get out, voice raspy. “But can we move to the couch? My back is starting to hurt.” 

Doyoung gives him the smallest of smiles, nodding. Without another word, Doyoung scoops Yuta up into his arms, hauling him off the floor and over to the couch with ease. Yuta’s dropped onto the cushions like a child, and in the back of his mind, he thinks he shouldn’t be this comfortable being underneath a vampire. Especially one that had red eyes and fangs poking out of it’s lips and was most definitely hungry, for something more than blood.

This thought disappears the moment Doyoung begins crawling over him, one hand curling around Yuta’s waist tightly, the other around one of his thighs to coax his legs open. Yuta’s heart pounds in his chest, and he doesn’t doubt Doyoung can hear it.

Doyoung pauses, hovering over the other, hand still holding a thigh in a vice like grip. “Okay?” He whispers, and Yuta wishes he didn’t swoon at how the vampire keeps making sure this was all okay with him.

Yuta nods, shimmying his hips in a way that says _ let’s get back to business.  _ “Yeah. You can take of my clothes, you know.”

Doyoung’s jaw tightens, and he leans down to kiss him again. Yuta almost jerks when he feels the vampire’s cold fingers pressing gently against his lower stomach, curling around the hem of his jeans. Doyoung takes his other hand off Yuta’s thigh and slides it up and under his shirt, pushing it up until it’s bunched under Yuta’s arms, and his chest is exposed.

Outside, lightning cracks, and a few seconds later, thunder booms, shaking the pictures on the walls, drowning out the sound of Yuta’s heavy breathing.

Doyoung pulls their mouths apart, a string of saliva connecting them, and Yuta feels so incredibly dirty for a moment. He swears Doyoung smirks at him, and suddenly the vampire is moving down, skipping his neck completely to instead mouth at the bare skin of Yuta’s chest.

Yuta whimpers, and the thunder rumbles in response. Doyoung travels down, down, until he reaches the hem of Yuta’s jeans. Doyoung raises his head to meet Yuta’s gaze, eyes searching, probably a silent question if this was okay. That Yuta needs to know there’s no turning back now. 

Yuta meets the vampire’s gaze with his own half-lidded one, confidence unwavering and feeling like he was about to do something dangerous. Like jump out of an airplane without a parachute, or drive off a cliff at full speed. 

Doyoung takes that as a confirmation, because he looks away, beginning the task of taking Yuta’s jeans off. He pulls them off with deft fingers, leaving Yuta in just his briefs, shirt still bunched under his arms and cock almost embarrassingly hard beneath the fabric of his underwear and Doyoung’s hands.

Doyoung settles himself between Yuta’s legs, running his finger lightly over Yuta’s hardness, just barely touching him. He looks far more put together than the other, who was practically panting, trying desperately not to wiggle too much or jerk towards Doyoung’s touch.

“Tell me what you want me to do,” Doyoung murmurs, voice like honey and velvet. Lightning cracks again, so bright it illuminates the apartment for a moment as it traces the night sky.

Yuta’s tiny moan is drowned out by the following thunder when Doyoung wraps his hand around his cock through the briefs.

“Speak up,” Doyoung suddenly says, and Yuta’s heart jumps into his throat at the tone of voice the vampire uses.

Yuta reaches out, hands a little shaky, for Doyoung. “Kiss me,” He mumbles, head too fuzzy to think of the right thing to say.

Doyoung smirks at him, but he does lean down to kiss Yuta again. Yuta takes the opportunity to card his fingers through Doyoung’s hair, keep him in place so he can whisper, “Bite me.”

Doyoung lets out a throaty groan that makes the hairs on the back of Yuta’s neck stand up, makes him shiver with anticipation. The vampire pushes his hips down suddenly, his own hardness pressing against Yuta’s and making the other choke on a whimper. Doyoung moves his lips across Yuta’s cheek, down to his neck and to the base of his throat. Yuta throws his head back, practically itching for that high, for Doyoung to sink his fangs in.

When he finally does, Yuta can’t help the moan he lets out. The delicious feeling floods his veins, his head immediately becoming hazy and his whole body feeling like it was floating. He’s grounded by Doyoung, when the vampire’s hands slide beneath his briefs and curl around his cock. Yuta jerks his hips impulsively into his grip, the feeling heightened from his state of mind right now, but Doyoung doesn’t let him move much. The vampire’s body is like stone, holding him in place as he drinks his blood and jerks him off at the same time. 

This is definitely not a situation Yuta ever saw himself getting into.

The whimpers Yuta lets out get progressively louder and more impatient the closer he comes to his impending orgasm. Doyoung doesn’t seem to be letting up anytime soon, still sucking at his neck with all the enthusiasm of the first time he had fed, and briefly Yuta wonders if the vampire realizes he’s taking much more blood than he’s ever taken before.

The thought is fleeting and barely there, because Yuta was much too wrapped up in all the sensations he had going to think about anything other than Doyoung. He could feel everything- Doyoung’s teeth in his skin, the movement of his throat as he swallowed his blood, his hips pressing against Yuta’s own, and the way he twisted his hand on Yuta’s cock with practiced ease, like they had done this together a million times before.

Yuta can feel himself on the edge, just a few more strokes and he’s done for, and he tries to let Doyoung know; tries to say anything, really, but all that comes out is a muddled version of Doyoung’s name. It’s drowned out by the ricocheting thunder outside, and with a flash of lightning, Yuta is coming apart under Doyoung’s hands.

It’s like something electric shoots through Yuta’s entire body. He spasms up, the white hot flashes of pleasure too much, so intense he feels like he’s going to die. His vision blacks out, and he feels like it’s never ending, his whole body twitching as he comes, long and drawn out and so, so much.

When it finally fades, and the pulses have died down, he feels like his bones have melted. He opens his eyes, slowly, to a terrific headache, and a dizziness so potent he genuinely thinks the room is spinning.

As his surroundings settle into place, he finds he’s still on the couch, but has been shifted easily into Doyoung’s arms, draped across the vampire’s lap. He can feel Doyoung scratching gently at his scalp, comforting and helpful as he grounds himself.

Doyoung’s eyes have slid back to their usual dark brown color, and his brow is furrowed in worry as he takes in Yuta’s drugged out expression. “I’m sorry.”

Yuta can’t find it in himself to speak, throat sore, and instead he just frowns in response.

“I took too much blood,” Doyoung explains, voice quiet and apologetic. “I couldn’t stop myself, I’m sorry, it was just-”

Yuta reaches up, hand trembling, to rest it on Doyoung’s cheek. The vampire pauses, waiting for Yuta to say something.

After a few moments of silence, Yuta pats Doyoung on the cheek, grinning at him, and manages to gather his voice to speak. “That was fucking awesome,” He gets out, voice raspy and raw.

Doyoung doesn’t look any less worried, although amusement flashes in his eyes, and he gives Yuta a stiff smile. “You’re okay?”

“Yeah,” Yuta says. He stretches out like a cat, his joints cracking loudly. Doyoung’s other hand is resting flat on his lower stomach, and when he stretches, he can feel the vampire’s fingers brushing the fine hairs of his happy trail, and he shivers. “That was the best orgasm I’ve ever had in my life. You’ve ruined me forever.”

If Doyoung was alive, he would definitely blush. He looks away from Yuta, instead looking at his fingers on the other’s skin. “I’ve never lost control like that before,” He whispers. The vulnerability in his voice makes Yuta pause.

“I just do that to men,” Yuta says cheerily, trying to brighten the tense mood of the room that had taken over suddenly. “I drive them crazy.”

His heart balloons in his chest when Doyoung can’t help but laugh. His face still looks a little closed off, but Yuta is just happy he’s smiling.

They sit like that for awhile, Doyoung carding his fingers through Yuta’s hair, and Yuta still coming down from the best high of his life, when he suddenly realizes something.

He lurches up into a sitting position. “You didn’t even fuck me!”

Doyoung makes a noise like he’s just choked on his own spit.

 

Later, when Yuta is lying in bed and Doyoung kneels on the floor beside him, fingers interlocked, Yuta remembers something Doyoung had mentioned earlier.

“What was that thing in Russian you told Johnny?” Yuta asks. “About the vampire fetish.”

“ любовь к опасности,” Doyoung repeats, tongue curling easily over the Russian words. Yuta has heard Ten speak Russian before, but when Doyoung does it, it sounds strangely sensual, voice deep and soft and heavy.

“What does that mean?”

“Love of danger,” Doyoung replies. Yuta feels the vampire’s fingers start tracing delicate circles on the back of his hand. The hair on the back of Yuta’s neck stands up, and he thinks about how being under Doyoung had felt like jumping out of an airplane without a parachute.

любовь к опасности sounds about right. 


	6. Chapter 6

Yuta wakes up in the morning to a pounding headache, bruises on his neck, and Doyoung sitting cross-legged on the couch watching the news. Yuta is amused by the sight, and is about to say so out loud, when he notices how tense Doyoung looks, and what exactly the news was saying.

A report was playing on loop about a vampire that had been captured in Daegu. It was extremely rare; a vampire hadn’t been spotted, at least publicly, in Korea for over a decade. The reporter was explaining that the vampire had been spotted by several witnesses, and the police had tracked it to the metros. The stations had been shut down, and after a nearly seven hour manhunt, the police had successfully captured the vampire.

It doesn’t stop there. The news shows footage of the armored truck that must carry the vampire, and the hundreds upon hundreds of protesters surrounding it, throwing things at the truck and attempting to stop it from moving. The reporter announces that the police were attempting to escort the vampire to a secluded location in the mountains and let it free, but the protesters wanted it killed on the spot, for fear it would come back into the city.

The reporter signs off, and the news segues to two anchormen discussing the logistics of killing the vampire, and the pros and cons of letting it free, where it could possibly come back and kill someone.

Yuta picks up the remote from beside Doyoung and clicks the television off. It takes a few seconds, but finally, Doyoung tears his eyes away from the blank screen, eyes unblinking, to look at Yuta. His expression is unreadable, and Yuta feels something like guilt pull in his chest. Humans weren’t all that terrible, as that news report made them out to be.

Unsure of what to say, the first thing Yuta can think of is what he blurts out. That just happens to be, “You want some coffee?”

To Yuta’s surprise, Doyoung nods. “Coffee,” He repeats, eyes still a little faraway, like he was replaying the image of the armored truck over and over in his mind.

Doyoung keeps the dazed look in his eye as Yuta moves through his morning routine, setting a mug of coffee down in front of the vampire (a little gingerly, because he’s not entirely sure if Doyoung really knew what he was responding to when Yuta had asked if he’d like some), showering, preparing breakfast, and even getting dressed for work.

When he comes out of his room, buttoning up the last of his shirt buttons, Doyoung has shift off the couch, and is hovering beside the window, looking down at the street below. Yuta doesn’t live in a particularly quiet neighborhood, so the sounds of people talking and cars ambling by filters up into his apartment if the windows are open.

“I’m going to work,” Yuta says, slowly. He’s not sure if he should invite Doyoung to come with him again. He doesn’t know what the vampire will do home alone for almost eight hours.

Doyoung glances back at him, and Yuta is surprised once again to find the coffee mug in his hand, half empty. Doyoung must notice his expression, because he shifts from one foot to the other, cradling the mug against his chest.

“Did you know,” Doyoung begins, startling Yuta out of his thoughts. “When coffee was first brought to Korea, we drank it because we thought it looked like the herbal medicine only rich noblemen were allowed?”

Yuta frowns. He was Japanese, so, no, he wouldn’t have known that. He only knows the most basic of Korean history, enough to get by in conversation if it ever came up (although it was rare). But then the word _‘we’_ settles in his mind, and he gives Doyoung a sharp look, his frown deepening. How old was Doyoung, exactly?

He’s begins to ask, but Doyoung cuts him off halfway through, placing the mug on the windowsill and glancing almost forlornly at the television. “Where is Daegu?”

“Uh,” Yuta racks his brain. “It’s south of Seoul. Southeast? It’s about two hours away by train.”

Doyoung nods, lost in thought. Yuta stands there dumbly, unsure what to say next.

“I’m going to go,” He says, finally. It falls on deaf ears, however, because Doyoung doesn’t even seem to hear him, turning back to look out the window.

 

Someone drops a card full of glitter on his desk midday, and Yuta is extremely pissed off about it, until he looks up and finds Taeil gleefully looking down at him.

“It’s my birthday this weekend,” Taeil announces with an absolute shit eating grin on his face.

“No,” Yuta says simply, brushing at the glitter that had rained down on the papers he had been marking up in front of him. “Absolutely not.”

Taeil pouts at him, looking far too much like a child despite being significantly older than Yuta. “You don’t even know what I’m going to say!”

“I know exactly what you’re going to say,” Yuta responds. He gathers up the papers in his hands and taps them against the desk to get them straightened out, tossing a dazzling smile at Taeil as he does so. “You’re going to say, _‘Yuta, l’m having a dinner for my birthday again!’._ You’re going to say, _‘Yuta, it’s going to be a small thing! Yuta, please come, maybe you’ll meet someone this time!’_ ”

Taeil frowns at him as Yuta stands and continues, the elder following on his heels as he heads down the hall towards Johnny’s office.

“And you know what’s going to happen? I’m going to come out, because I’m a great friend, and I want to celebrate with you, and it’s going to start small. And then it’s going to turn into a bar crawl, and by the fourth bar everyone except Sicheng and I are going to be blasted, and Taeyong is going to try to suck Johnny’s dick in public again--”

Johnny looks up, startled, as Yuta and Taeil walk into his office, Yuta still talking animatedly as he slaps the papers down on Johnny’s desk.

“--and Sicheng is going to go home with some girl he just met, and I’m going to be left trying to haul your drunk ass out of the bathroom while you scream at every man that passes us that I am single, and, as you put it, _‘A total bottom with an ass that just won’t quit’_. So, you tell me, Taeil, why do you think I wouldn’t want to come out to your birthday dinner this year?”

Taeil looks like a petulant child, glaring at Yuta. “You’re such a buzzkill, man.”

“It’s his birthday,” Johnny says pointedly. “Come on, I promise we won’t drink that much. You know if you don’t show up Taeyong will show up at your apartment and drag you out, anyway.”

Yuta turns on his heel to scoff at Johnny. “Yeah, lets see him get in my apartment now that I have Doyoung as a guard dog.”

Johnny narrows his eyes, looking just the vaguest bit threatened at the mention of the vampire. Beside Yuta, Taeil perks up instantly, as nosey as ever.

“Doyoung? Who’s Doyoung?” Taeil’s eyes light up as the name rings a bell in his mind. “Wait, that guy you brought into work yesterday?”

“He’s not--” Yuta begins. He is effectively cut off when Sicheng comes barreling into Johnny’s office, panting like he’s just run a marathon.

“Holy fuck, guys,” He gasps. He scrambles towards Johnny’s desk, hip checking Johnny’s chair so the elder slides out of his way, and immediately begins frantically typing on the computer.

“Uh, rude,” Johnny says, giving Sicheng a bewildered look. “You know you have your own office, right?”

“Did you guys hear about that vampire in Daegu? The one that they caught in the metro? It got loose” Sicheng finally manages to get out, eyes huge. Yuta can feel Johnny’s eyes hit him like lasers, and he feels his blood run cold, suddenly getting an overwhelming sense of dread.

“But, like, look at this,” Sicheng rapidly clicks on the mouse, hitting play on a live news stream and swinging the monitor around so the others could see with such force Johnny scolds him for almost breaking it.

Yuta’s heart pounds in his chest, his ears ringing, as he watches. He can’t entirely make out what the reporter was saying- it sounded blurred together and nonsensical through the white noise rushing in his head, almost like when he first moved to Seoul and couldn’t speak a lick of Korean. He can tell the reporter is saying something quickly, something very important, but just as Yuta regains his hearing and tries to tune into his words, the news cuts to a blurry, CCTV clip.

It’s of the armored truck that had been stranded in Daegu, surrounded by protestors. The clip shows the truck, perfectly normal, and the crowds being held back by policemen. Suddenly, the truck flips, as though hit head-on by a train, being thrown through the air until it lands on its roof. The crowd scatters, and like a force of nature, the armored back doors of the truck are blown clean off its hinges, one of the doors flying straight at the CCTV camera and knocking it black.

The remaining clip is of static, the reporter speaking over it, and Sicheng pauses it there.

There’s silence in the room. Sicheng stares at them all, waiting for a reaction. The silence would almost be unbearable, and Yuta can feel Johnny’s gaze burning a hole into the side of his face, when Taeil finally breaks it with a, “Holy shit, what was that?”

“It was another vampire, apparently,” Sicheng announces, looking like he had been bursting at the seams holding this information in. “It wasn’t caught on camera, but all the protesters swear they saw something knock the truck over.”

Yuta’s brain is working too slowly, processing this information at a much lower rate than usual. Doyoung’s voice from this morning rings in his head. _Where is Daegu?_

“What about the one they caught?”

_Where is Daegu?_

“It got away when the doors were blown off. They think it headed towards the mountains.”

_Where is Daegu?_

“Fuck!” Yuta finally shouts, the puzzle pieces settling into place at last. Sicheng and Taeil jump at his sudden outburst, but Johnny is giving him a look, one that almost looks accusing. Yuta pats his pockets, looking for his phone, before swiveling to look at Sicheng. “When was this broadcasted?”

Sicheng frowns. “Uh,” He clicks the video link again, taking too long for Yuta’s liking. “Like twenty minutes ago?”

Yuta lunges for Johnny’s work phone, smashing in Taeyong’s number by heart. Johnny is watching him with that look, still, and Yuta really wishes he would stop. Sicheng and Taeil just look confused.

“Hello?” Comes Taeyong’s cheerful answer after three rings, which feels like hours on Yuta’s end.

“Taeyong!” Yuta says, definitely a little too loudly. Everyone in the room jumps, including Johnny, and on the other end, he hears Taeyong curse.

“Jesus, what? What’s wrong?”

“Do me a favor,” Yuta begins. He takes a step away from Johnny, than another, lifting the phone up with him so he can get as far away from the elder as the cords would allow. Johnny is frowning at him, and Yuta can see the cogs working in his mind, close to figuring out Yuta’s plan. “Can you run to my apartment and check on--”

“No!” Johnny practically yells, diving over his desk to yank at the phone cord. “Don’t you fucking dare!”

“Check on Doyoung for me!” Yuta shouts over Johnny scrambling to take the phone from him. “See if he’s home! Tell him to come here and--”

Johnny manages to snatch the phone from Yuta’s hands, immediately slamming his finger down on the end call button. He glares at Yuta, hair wild from the sudden movement, and Yuta glares back.

Sicheng and Taeil, who are both still glued to the spots they were before, look between them, extremely uncomfortable.

“Guys--” Sicheng begins, but Johnny cuts him off.

“Are you fucking stupid?” Johnny snarls. “Are you? Are you a fucking idiot? Why would you send Taeyong to your apartment?”

“How the fuck else am I supposed to know if he’s okay?” Yuta demands, fury like a fire ensnaring his veins, making him shake angrily. “He could be hurt.”

“He’s a fucking _vampire_ ,” Johnny growls. Beside him, Sicheng’s eyes widen comically. “He’s fine. He just blew open a god damn armored truck with his bare hands.”

“That doesn’t mean he isn’t hurt,” Yuta snaps back.

Johnny runs his hands through his hair, frustrated, and slumps in his seat. “Are you really fucking stupid! Do you know anything about vampire adrenaline? About how they act after feeding or doing something that requires inhumane abilities? He’s probably riding a kill high right now! He could fucking murder Taeyong!”

Yuta stops in his place. Kill high? He had never heard of that term before. He doubts anyone had actually died when the truck had been flipped (although a few cameras definitely took a toll). But something else ticks him off, and he curls his lip at Johnny, affronted.

“How they act after feeding?” Yuta repeats. “Have you been with a vampire after feeding?”

Johnny narrows his eyes. “Have _you_?”

There’s silence. Sicheng and Taeil’s eyes land on Yuta as well, and Yuta feels his face flushing from something other than anger. Embarrassment, maybe, or like he’s had a secret he didn’t want anyone knowing found out.

“Do you guys--” Taeil begins, voice quiet. “--know the vampire from the news?”

Before Yuta can answer, the phone rings shrilly on Johnny’s desk. Johnny dives for it before Yuta can, answering with a breathless, “Taeyong?”

The tension of the room allows Taeyong’s voice to be heard ringing through the receiver, calm and collected as ever. “Uh, did something happen? Why were you and Yuta screaming at each other?”

“Nothing,” Johnny supplies hurriedly. “Are you okay?”

“What? Why wouldn’t I be?”

Johnny doesn’t reply, and Yuta takes the silence to shout in the general direction of the phone, “Was Doyoung home?”

“Yeah, he was,” Taeyong says, and Yuta’s heart drops into his stomach. “I told him you wanted him at work and he left without even saying thanks, or anything.”

Yuta gives Johnny a look that says, _I told you so_.

“Wait, Doyoung?” Sicheng asks, frowning. “Your cousin? He’s a vampire?”

“He’s not my cousin,” Yuta snorts.

“But he’s a _vampire?!”_

 

Yuta has to pin both Sicheng and Taeil to the sofa in Johnny’s office and make them swear on their ancestors graves that they wouldn’t tell anyone about Doyoung. They join him as he hurries back to his office, berating him with questions about vampires while Johnny looks on in concern a few steps away. Yuta is just telling them to fuck off and let him finish working when they turn into Yuta’s office and find Doyoung sitting at one of the chairs, back straight, dressed in that same black coat he had been wearing when Yuta had returned home from his flight.

He turns to glance at them all, eyebrow quirking at the group of them. In his hands, he cradles a large Starbucks cup.

“Is that coffee?” Yuta asks, surprised, the same time Sicheng gasps, “No fucking way, you called him, like, ten minutes ago!”

The younger wiggles his way around Yuta and into the office, walking right up to Doyoung and staring down at him like he was an exhibit at the zoo.

“I knew it wasn’t your cousin,” Sicheng says proudly. “It’s definitely Korean, that wouldn’t make sense. Where are you from? How long have you been a vampire? How did you meet Yuta?”

“Knock it off,” Yuta snaps, glaring at him as Taeil sneaks his way into the office as well. Johnny pushes Yuta in wordlessly, still looking annoyed from earlier, and closes the door behind himself. He peers through the blinds as lookout, looking more suspicious than the situation garnered.

Taeil approaches Doyoung much more gingerly, looking apprehensive at best. “Is it-- Does it speak?”

“Were you under the impression vampires don’t speak?” Doyoung asks flatly. Taeil jumps, his expression one like a deer caught in headlights.

Sicheng laughs heartily. “I like it!”

Yuta glares at them both, stomping towards his desk. “ _He_ is not a fucking thing. Don’t call him it.”

By the door, Johnny clears his throat. They all turn to look at him, but he keeps his eyes on Doyoung, steadily holding the vampire’s gaze. “That was you on the news, right? In Daegu? You freed that vampire?”

Doyoung’s lips press together in a thin line. “Yes.”

“Holy fuck,” Sicheng breathes out, still staring at Doyoung with an awe-struck look. “You made back from Daegu in half an hour or something?”

Doyoung nods at Sicheng’s question, still meeting Johnny’s eyes.

“I know you’re a vampire, but you shouldn’t have done that,” Johnny says, shifting from one foot to the other. Yuta feels anger flare up inside him suddenly, annoyed that Johnny would have the audacity to tell Doyoung what he should and shouldn’t do. “That guy you let loose, he could’ve been a criminal, they were trying to protect the people in--”

“A criminal?” Doyoung repeats. His voice comes out ice cold, something Yuta has never heard before. Sicheng stops smiling, and Taeil glances between all of them warily. “You think that man was a criminal?”

Johnny steels his gaze and tries his best to keep looking Doyoung in the eye. “No, but that _vampire_ could’ve been.”

Doyoung is on his feet in a second. Yuta blinks and Doyoung isn’t in the chair across from him anymore, instead standing an arms-length away from Johnny. Johnny jerks, startled at the sudden proximity, and Sicheng lets out a little, “Oh, fuck.”

“You think because that man was a vampire he was a criminal?” Doyoung asks. His voice is deadly slow, anger seeping through every word, although his face is blank save for the red flashing of his eyes. “You think, because he was a vampire, he deserved to be treated like an animal? Hunted down in the underground tunnels and thrown into a cage, his fate to be decided by people like you, people who are afraid?”

Johnny tries to reel the conversation in, desperately trying to avoid Doyoung’s gaze now. “That’s not--”

“You get to decide if he is allowed to roam free in the country he has every right to be in, or if he should be slaughtered like a farm animal? You get to decide if his fangs are used for their ivory, for humans trophy cases?” Doyoung snaps his fingers inches from Johnny’s face, curling his lips back to bare his fangs suddenly. “Look at me when I’m speaking to you.”

The tone he takes is demanding, reminds Yuta of the night before when Doyoung had ordered him to speak up. He squirms in his chair, feeling unreasonably overheated at Doyoung radiating such a dominant aura throughout the room.

Johnny finally looks up to meet Doyoung’s gaze. There’s silence as they stare each other down, Doyoung clearly winning, until he finally speaks again.

“One hundred and twenty two,” Doyoung announces.

Johnny blinks, confused, and the trance between the two of them is broken for a moment. “Huh?”

Doyoung pulls away from Johnny, although he reaches up to brush at some non-existent lint on the other’s shoulder, making Johnny flinch violently.

“One hundred and twenty two,” Doyoung repeats. He turns to face Yuta, gliding smoothly back to his own chair and settling down. “I am one hundred and twenty two years old. I counted the numbers this morning.”

Yuta stares at him. Johnny is slumped against the door, looking drained of all energy, and Sicheng and Taeil stare at Doyoung with mesmerized features. It takes Yuta a solid ten seconds or so to remember the question he had asked Doyoung before he’d left for work.

“Oh,” Yuta finally breathes out. “Good to know.”


	7. Chapter 7

The next two days pass slowly, like time stretches its legs and decides to take a break so Yuta ends up feeling like his time at work drags on for hours and hours. After the incident with Johnny and the vampire in Daegu, Doyoung becomes reclusive, lurking in the corners of Yuta’s apartment and watching the other with dark eyes. Yuta feels like his skin is prickling every time he passes the vampire, and even when he tries offering him coffee or sweet talk Doyoung doesn’t respond. Just watches him, dazed, like his mind is elsewhere.

On Saturday night, after a frustrating attempt to lure Doyoung out of the bedroom closet where he’d barricaded himself in like a cat, Yuta gives up when he hears a knock on his door, signaling Taeyong and Johnny’s arrival to pick him up for Taeil’s birthday dinner.

When he opens the door, Taeyong’s first words are, “You look terrible!”

Yuta glares at him, leaving the door open as he goes to retrieve his coat from the hall closet. “Gee, thanks so much.”

“You just look really sick,” Taeyong quickly clarifies. “You’ve gotten so pale.”

Johnny shifts from one foot to the other, peering around Yuta into the apartment but not moving from his spot outside the door.

“I probably just need alcohol,” Yuta grumbles, shoving on his coat. “He’s not gonna spring out at you, if that’s what you’re wondering,” He adds to Johnny, raising a brow. “He’s been in a sour mood since Thursday.”

Johnny at least has enough shame to look apologetic. “I’m sorry.”

“Where is he?” Taeyong asks, stepping in a little to crane his neck over Yuta’s shoulder. Yuta pushes him back out the door, shouting in the general direction of the bedroom closet, “I’m going out!” before closing the door behind them.

“He locked himself in the closet,” Yuta explains as he locks his door. “I’d be worried about him if he actually needed to sleep or eat regularly, but--” He shrugs, a vague expression of  _ you know what I mean. _

They take the subway downtown, Taeyong already eagerly chattering away about the bars they were going to hit up after dinner. Yuta is grateful for the distraction, and the ability to go out with his friends without Doyoung for the first time since he returned from Russia. It was difficult to focus on anything else when Doyoung was attached to his hip, giving him heavy looks and looking like… that.

They arrive at the upscale restaurant to find Taeil and Sicheng already at a table, and to Yuta’s absolute surprise, Ten. 

All thoughts of Doyoung fly from Yuta’s head at the sight of the younger boy, and he almost trips over his own feet to throw himself at Ten, practically settling directly in his lap.

Ten laughs stupidly, eyes crinkling when he smiles, and he wraps his arms around Yuta, hugging him tightly. “Long time no see.”

Taeil clears his throat, cheeks already pink from the half empty sake bottle on the table, and looks grumpily at Yuta. “Hey, it’s  _ my _ birthday.”

Yuta untangles himself from Ten and instead throws himself in Taeil’s lap, elated and heart light from the group being completed by Ten. “Happy birthday, you big handsome drunk.”

Taeil flushes, smiling dumbly at Yuta, while Johnny and Taeyong greet Ten, settling into their own seats. 

“What are you doing here?” Taeyong asks as a waiter brushes by and places glasses of water in front of them. “I thought the Bolshoi’s season just started.”

“It did!” Ten says cheerily, using his chopstick to pick up a piece of the salmon roll in front of him. “I sprained my ankle yesterday!”

Sicheng frowns at him. “Isn’t that bad?” He asks, the same time Yuta groans, “I leave you alone for  _ three days _ .” 

Ten shrugs, looking far too happy for someone who was basically considered incapacitated now in his line of work. “It’s whatever. It’ll heal in a week or two, and I can fly back then and pick up wherever my understudy left off,” He looks at Yuta pointedly. “Plus, Yuta can tell you, we do Swan Lake every fucking year. It gets  _ so boring _ .”

 

The dinner goes smoothly, Yuta slowly drinking at the same pace as everyone else, and ending up pleasantly drunk by the end of it, when Sicheng announces it’s time to leave for the first bar. Johnny disappears to pay the check while the rest of them huddle outside by the front doors, leaning on each other for support and trying not to laugh at the way Taeyong slurs his words stupidly.

All thoughts of Doyoung had disappeared during the dinner, Yuta too involved in catching up with his friends and enjoying the night. However, as they stand waiting for Johnny, two men nearby light up their cigarettes, waiting for the valet to bring their car around, and Yuta can’t help but overhear their conversation.

“--fucking mutants,” The taller one is saying. They both smell like beer and too-heavy cologne, their clothes tailored and expensive. “Should’ve just killed them all off in the eighties when we had the chance.”

His shorter friend nods, taking a drag from his cigarette. “Disgusting, all of them. That Daegu one should’ve been shot on sight.”

Yuta perks up at the mention of Daegu, brain slowly processing that they were talking about vampires. His friends didn’t seem to hear the men, too busy joking with each other.

“The Americans got one thing right with their laws on them,” The tall one snorts. “They shoot first, ask questions later. No rights. They don’t deserve them.”

“They’re savage,” The short one agrees. “A danger to--” 

“Hey,” Yuta says loudly, taking a step forward. It’s more of a stumble, but his blood is boiling from their words, and he doesn’t really notice how close he gets to them until he’s up in the taller one’s face. “Shut the fuck up.”

The man looks affronted, glaring at Yuta. “Excuse me?”

Behind him, Yuta feels someone's hand curl around his arm, and he thinks he hears Sicheng mumble, “Yuta, stop--”.

“I said,” Yuta hiccups, doing his best to match the man’s deathly stare. “Shut the fuck up. You don’t know anything about vampires.”

The shorter one pushes Yuta by the shoulder, and he stumbles back, surprised. “Don’t be an idiot, kid. Walk away.”

“No, you’re--” Yuta tries to stomp forward again, and this time the taller one shoves him, hard. The cigarette is still in his hand, and it gets the collar of Yuta’s shirt, singing through it and burning Yuta on his collarbone. Yuta ends up on his ass on the sidewalk, gasping and patting at his collar.

Sicheng and Taeyong rush to help him to his feet, and Ten glares at the men, furious. “You burned him!”

The taller man snorts, taking a drag from his cigarette and blowing the smoke in Ten’s face. “He deserved it. Maybe he should think twice before--”

The man stops talking suddenly, face turning red. They all stare at him, confused, until he suddenly is lifted off his feet by a seemingly invisible force, eyes bulging and gasping for breath.

He’s moved slightly to the left, and behind him is Doyoung, holding the man up with one hand wrapped around the back of his neck, his fingers digging into the sides so tightly Yuta could see the bruises already forming.

The veins in the man’s neck bulge as well, and his face is beginning to turn purple, but Yuta can’t look away from Doyoung. The vampire stares directly at him, eyes black as night, blown out and hazey. 

_ Kill high.  _ Johnny’s words ring through his head, and Yuta feels a shudder ripple down his spine. He doesn’t think this is what Johnny meant, but the dead look in Doyoung’s eyes was enough to make his skin prickle at the thought.

“Doyoung,” He manages to get out, voice raspy. “Stop it.”

At his words, Doyoung releases the man, who topples face first to the ground, landing on his knees and wheezing for breath. The shorter man looks horrified, switching between trying desperately to help his friend up and shooting terrified looks at Doyoung. 

Doyoung steps neatly around the men, all focus on Yuta now, his eyes slowly warming to a soft brown as he kneels down to bodily lift Yuta off the ground and onto his feet.

Yuta has to take a moment to gather his surroundings and digest what just happened. Doyoung reaches out to smooth down Yuta’s hair, not even blinking when the two men get to their feet and run off, shouting something about calling the police.

“Are you hurt?” Doyoung asks, softly, and Yuta’s heart feels like it’s going to explode at the warm look the vampire gives him.

“Yeah, I--” Yuta begins, but he’s cut off as he’s hip-checked out of the way by Ten, who proceeds to grab Doyoung’s face between his hands and pull at his cheeks like a child’s.

“Are you  _ kidding  _ me?!” Ten asks, gaping at the vampire. He smooths his thumbs over the dark circles under Doyoung’s eyes, pulling at the skin and even pushing back his hair. “What the fuck are  _ you  _ doing here?!”

To everyone’s surprise, Doyoung grins at Ten, lips pulling back to reveal a gummy smile and his elongated fangs. Yuta can feel Taeil take a step back nervously beside him.

Doyoung’s reply to Ten is in Russian, and Yuta only feels slightly annoyed at the way Ten throws his head back to laugh at whatever Doyoung said and responds in Russian as well. 

Footsteps sound behind them as Johnny finally exits the restaurant, and he stops in his tracks when he spots Doyoung.

“Oh,” He says, looking surprised and perhaps a little apprehensive. “I thought he wasn’t coming, Yuta?” His eyes land on Ten, who was still holding Doyoung’s face between his hands like he was a close friend and not a perfectly evolutionized killing machine, and Johnny looks alarmed. “Ten, what are you doing?” 

Ten pats Doyoung on the cheek much like he would a dog, looking amused at how everyone except Yuta was staring at him like he had just tamed a wild animal. “Saying hello. You owe me a deposit, by the way,” He throws over his shoulder at Doyoung.

 

Doyoung trails along with them to the first bar, and the second, mostly staying quiet and wrapping himself around Yuta protectively. Johnny still looks apprehensive, and Taeil looks downright terrified of the vampire, but Sicheng and Taeyong are too drunk to give a shit, offering Doyoung shots and giving Yuta suggestive looks every time he shifted and Doyoung moved along with him, refusing to unlatch himself from the human’s side. 

It’s at the second bar that Doyoung finally seems to settle down, recognizing no one was going to hurt Yuta as long as he was there, and the vampire falls into comfortable conversation in Russian with Ten. Yuta tries his best to understand what they’re saying, but his brain is sluggish from the alcohol, and his Russian was piss poor at best. He just ends up frustrated that he can’t understand them and only a little jealous at how smoothly Doyoung speaks to Ten, more than he had spoken to Yuta in days. 

Yuta excuses himself to go find Johnny, who had disappeared outside the bar with Taeil ten minutes ago. Taeyong and Sicheng were somewhere near the billiard tables, their voices carrying across the bar as they taunt whoever it was they were playing (and from what Yuta could deduce, losing spectacularly).

He finds Johnny and Taeil just outside the steps of the bar, sharing a cigarette. He wrinkles his nose at the smell of smoke, and descends the steps to join them, leaning on the railing just beside Johnny.

“Is he good?” Yuta asks, after taking in Taeil’s half-lidded eyes and wobbly stance.

Johnny nods, patting Taeil gently on the shoulder as he takes a drag. “Yeah, I got him. He went a little too hard at dinner and now it’s catching up to him.”

Yuta smiles fondly at the birthday boy, accepting the half-finished cigarette when Johnny offers it to him. He almost never smokes, but he had been drinking, and besides, he’s had a strange taste in his mouth ever since Doyoung showed up. He can’t place the feeling exactly, but something was itching just beneath his skin, making him antsy and annoyed.

“Can I ask you something?” Johnny says suddenly, breaking the comfortable silence.

Yuta exhales smoke, the minty taste of menthol making his cheeks tingle. “Is it about Doyoung?”

Johnny doesn’t reply at first, taking the cigarette back when Yuta hands it to him. He takes another drag, and Yuta briefly wonders if Johnny smokes more than he let on, by the way he seemed to hold the smoke in his lungs with ease.

“Doyoung’s fed from you, right?” Johnny asks, finally. He keeps his face composed, but his eyes are brimming with curiosity.

Yuta can’t really find it in himself to lie, not when he was feeling on edge and tipsy. “Yeah.”

One of Johnny’s brows quirk, but he makes no other change in his facial expression. Yuta appreciates him trying his best to act normal despite the strange topic of conversation. “What-- what does that feel like?” 

“Like an orgasm,” Yuta replies immediately, surprising even himself with how confidently he responds. “But without the build up. Instant gratification.”

Johnny lets out a low whistle, stubbing the cigarette butt out on the railing beside them. “Wow.”

He glances casually at Yuta’s neck, as though expecting to see teeth marks right there in front of him. Yuta snorts at his not-so-subtle attempt to look.

“He doesn’t leave marks,” He explains. “Vampire’s saliva, remember? It has healing properties.”

“I thought that was an urban legend,” Johnny murmurs, half to himself.

“If it was, I doubt they would’ve been hunted to near extinction.”

Johnny nods to himself. “Do you think he’s fed from anyone else while he’s been here?”

The question was off-handed and said more out loud as a mere thought, but it hits Yuta with the force of a truck. He had never even considered the idea that Doyoung had fed on anyone but himself; but now that he thinks about it, Doyoung must have. He couldn’t have possibly walked through Russia, slipped through China, and snuck through North Korea without feeding at all, no matter how quickly vampires could move.

Another thought stikes him like lightning, knocking his breath away, and Yuta realizes why he had been feeling uncomfortable since Doyoung appeared tonight. Doyoung was only here because he had a life debt to Yuta, for saving him that night in Moscow. But Yuta wasn’t the only one who had saved Doyoung. Ten had, as well.

It was Ten’s apartment Yuta had brought Doyoung back to, and it was Ten who cleaned Doyoung’s blood off his body, and offered him clean clothes and place to rest, despite whatever objections Ten had originally had to the idea. 

And now Ten was in Seoul as well, happily greeting the vampire like an old friend and speaking in one of Doyoung’s native tongues. That smile Doyoung had given Ten was so genuine, so pleased to see the ballerina once again. Doyoung had never given Yuta a smile like that. Sure, he had laughed at his jokes and given him soft smiles across the room, but he had never outright grinned at Yuta like he was overjoyed just to see him.

“Yuta?” Johnny asks, startling the other out of his thoughts. Johnny furrows his brow at him. “Are you okay? You look like you’re gonna be sick.”

Yuta nods, waving him off, still more than a little lost in his head, in the swirling, dark thoughts that were suddenly taking over him. He didn’t like this feeling. He felt territorial and possessive, and like he suddenly couldn’t keep his head above water no matter how hard he tried, losing control of his thoughts as they unravel before him. 

He straightens up abruptly, making Johnny jump, and even Taeil give him a drunken frown. He ignores both of them, instead hurrying back up the steps and into the bar to search for Doyoung.

He finds the vampire exactly where he left him, sitting at the bar with Ten and still speaking animatedly to the other. Jealousy rears its ugly head in Yuta’s chest, so strong he almost sees red, and he has to to take a moment to compose himself before he heads back over to them.

“I’m gonna go home,” He announces, turning his gaze directly on Doyoung, hoping to convey the swirling emotions he was feeling inside in one look. Doyoung blinks at him, face blank, but Yuta feels Doyoung’s hand curl around his wrist gently, pulling him close.

Ten pouts at Yuta. “Already? It’s barely midnight.”

Yuta nods, squeezing his eyes shut. “I don’t feel well,” He manages to get out through gritted teeth.

Doyoung is instantly on his feet, eyes worried. “What’s wrong? Did someone hurt you? Are you ill?”

Yuta shakes his head, pulling at Doyoung’s hand on his wrist so he could squeeze it in his own instead. “No, I’m just tired.”

Ten gives Yuta sympathetic look, patting him on the shoulder. “Get home safe, okay? I’ll tell the others you guys left early.”

Yuta feels so guilty for the animosity he was seething towards Ten right now. Ten was his best friend. He was nothing short of an angel. But jealousy doesn’t care about friendships or brotherhood- it was too busy snarling viciously in Yuta’s chest over getting Doyoung away from Ten, away from this bar, and away from people who might take the vampire away from him.

“Yeah, whatever,” Is all he replies, already tugging Doyoung towards the exit. 


	8. Chapter 8

Yuta’s stomach is in knots.

He tries his best to calm the anxiety coursing through him as he stands beside Doyoung on the subway. He grips the pole a little too tightly, so his knuckles turn white. Doyoung must notice, but he says nothing, instead watching Yuta with an unreadable expression.

It’s only when they’re getting of at their stop that someone bumps into Yuta’s shoulder, and he hisses at the pain, a sudden reminder he had been burned earlier.

Doyoung hovers over him like a concerned mother, a hand on Yuta’s back to gently guide him out of the station.

“Are you alright?” Doyoung asks, voice low with worry, and Yuta feels something strong and foreign surge in his chest.

“I’m okay,” He whispers. Doyoung doesn’t seem to believe him, because the entire walk back to the apartment he stays close to Yuta, hand still on his lower back.

When they finally reach the apartment and get inside, Doyoung immediately begins the task of unbuttoning Yuta’s shirt. Yuta startles, pretty confused as to why he was being undressed until Doyoung pushes the shirt off one shoulder to reveal the burn mark Yuta was sporting.

“Oh, yeah,” Yuta says out loud, being reminded once again of its existence. He had completely put it out of his mind once Doyoung had frightened those men off. “I think I have burn gel in the--”

The words die in his throat as Doyoung unexpectedly leans forward, pressing his hands to Yuta’s hips to keep him in place, and promptly flattens his tongue out over Yuta’s skin to lick at the burn.

Yuta’s whole face turns red- he can feel it. Doyoung licks him once, twice, and after the third time the burn has disappeared completely, like it had never even happened. Yuta’s skin prickles from the feeling, the hair on his arms raising from the touch.

Doyoung pulls back to inspect his handiwork, but he doesn’t loosen his hold on Yuta’s hips. Yuta is left standing inches from Doyoung’s face, shirt hanging off his body, shoulder shining from the vampire’s saliva, and heart hammering in his chest with that strange feeling from before.

Before he can stop himself, Yuta blurts out, “Are you going to leave me for Ten?”

Doyoung, to his credit, looks appalled at the question, frowning. “Ten?”

“Yeah, you know,” Yuta braces himself for his next words, training his eyes on a spot on the wall just behind Doyoung. “You said you owe me a life debt, but Ten saved your life, too. And you get along better with him and he lives in Moscow which is--”

“Ten did not save me,” Doyoung cuts him off. He looks a little angry, brows pulled together as if Yuta’s said something upsetting. “You saved me.”

Yuta can feel himself flush. “I mean, we both kinda--” 

“No,” Doyoung says firmly. “You found me on the street. You fought him to keep me alive. You carried me home. You alone fed me since then.”

Yuta has vivid flashbacks to when he’d found Doyoung and called Ten, shivering in the dark alley and telling Ten the vampire was hurt. He remembers Ten shrieking at him that he was going to call the police, so loudly Yuta’s only option to shut him up was to hang up the phone.

But Doyoung’s words finally process in his mind, and Yuta forgoes staring at the wall to give the other a confused look. “Alone? You’ve only fed from me since I found you?”

Doyoung raises a brow as if it were a stupid question to ask. “Of course.”

“But you walked here!” Yuta exclaims, shocked. “From Russia! And I only fed you once when I was in Moscow!”

Doyoung laughs, big and all gums and teeth, and Yuta swears his heart stups. “I don’t need to feed every day, Yuta. I can go weeks without feeding if the conditions are right.”

He keeps laughing, like it’s so amusing to him that Yuta was concerned about his health. His eyes crinkle and his laugh is gentle and his hands are still on Yuta’s hips. Yuta feels like his heart is going to burst, a light, butterfly-like feeling filling his stomach and his chest until it goes straight to his head. 

Yuta can’t help it, really. He feels a little dizzy and lightheaded, and Doyoung just looks so pretty and is pressed so close, so he does the only thing he can think of, which is to kiss Doyoung until they’re both breathless.

When he pulls away, Doyoung’s eyes are blown out, hazey and dark like the other night when he’d had Yuta underneath him on the couch.

Yuta barely has a moment to blink before he’s suddenly being lifted clean off the floor, easily like he’s a child. He wraps his legs around Doyoung’s waist, letting out a very undignified noise as Doyoung begins carrying him through the apartment to his bedroom. 

He can’t help but laugh when he’s dropped gracefully onto the bed, Doyoung standing over him with a twinkle in his eye. “As much as I love being carried, you need to give me some sort of warning next time.”

Doyoung just hums in response, climbing onto the bed so he can chase Yuta’s lips with his own. Yuta almost chastises him when the vampire pushes him down by his shoulders, before he remembers the burn mark is gone.

Doyoung’s mouth is sweet and addictive. Yuta is sure his own lips tastes like a terrible mix between sake and whatever shots Taeyong had given him earlier, but Doyoung clearly doesn’t mind, if the way he licks into Yuta’s mouth is any indication.

Yuta feels something hard press against his lower stomach, and he jerks upwards on reflex. Doyoung’s chest rumbles with a deep, primal sort of noise, and suddenly his hands are sliding down to Yuta’s hips, tugging at his jeans with insistence.

Yuta laughs against his lips, pushing Doyoung away for a moment to assist in taking off his own pants. Doyoung leans back on his heels, watches Yuta kick them off before he’s pouncing on Yuta again and taking it upon himself to pull of the other’s shirt and boxers as well. 

Yuta’s left completely naked, open and bare while the other is still clothed. He wiggles beneath Doyoung, who’s taking his time to drink in the sight of Yuta laid out for him like prey waiting to be eaten. 

“You too,” Yuta whispers, voice quiet because he’s afraid to break the delicate tension the room held. He tugs at Doyoung’s sweater to emphasize his point, and Doyoung nods, tugging his sweater over his head.

Yuta lets out a stupid, embarrassing noise at the sight of Doyoung shirtless. He reaches out to run his hand over Doyoung’s chest, dragging his fingers over the other’s stomach. Doyoung doesn’t move, although his face twitches slightly at the touch, as though he were trying very hard to keep himself under control.

“Well, that’s not fair at all,” Yuta finally announces, looking up to meet the other’s gaze. “I bet you have a perfect dick, too, don’t you?”

Without missing a beat, Doyoung smiles slyly at him and replies, “Perfect for you.”

Yuta groans out loud, collapsing back against the sheets, and tries to cover up the fact that his face was turning bright red from the comment. “Oh, my God, shut up. Take off your pants before I change my mind.” 

Doyoung laughs, smile turning soft and gentle. He tugs off his own pants, leaning down as he does so to kiss Yuta again. Despite the terrible pun, Doyoung has absolutely no trouble getting Yuta worked up again. Within minutes Yuta is panting beneath him, hips jerking up against Doyoung’s, trying desperately to get some sort of friction against his cock. Doyoung’s positioned himself so that when Yuta does thrust up, he’s simply rutting against Doyoung’s hip, just a few inches shy of where he wants to be.

When Yuta lets out a particularly pathetic whimper, Doyoung drags his lips away from Yuta’s, kissing along his cheek and jaw until he’s settled his mouth at the base of Yuta’s throat. Yuta’s breath hitches, his heart rate doubling, and Doyoung can most definitely hear it with how he’s rubbing his face against Yuta’s skin, inhaling deeply.

“Doyoung--” Yuta begins, but he cuts himself off with a gasp when Doyoung’s hand slides between his legs, long fingers wrapping around his erection and tugging. Yuta’s hands find their way into Doyoung’s hair, and he pulls tight, thrusting weakly into the vampire’s grip and trying his hardest not to let out all the noises he was collecting in his chest. 

“Yuta,” Doyoung murmurs, lifting his head, and his eyes are red now, blown out and predatory-like. Yuta hiccups over another noise as Doyoung jerks him off, his other hand curled tight around Yuta’s hip like he had done the other night on the couch. “Can I--?”

He trails off, eyes flickering back down to Yuta’s throat, and Yuta understands immediately.

“Yes,” Yuta responds a little too quickly. “Please.”

He tilts his chin up to the ceiling, exposing his neck completely, just to prove his own point. He can’t see it, but he feels the way Doyoung’s grip on him tightens, the way his chest rumbles with that animalistic noise. It’s a split second of waiting, like he’s hovering mid-air and waiting for the drop, before he feels Doyoung’s teeth sink into him, and white-hot pleasure fills his head like heroin.

Yuta inhales a stuttering breath, the combined feeling of Doyoung’s hand on his cock and his teeth in his neck just as fucking phenomenal as it had been the first time they’d done this. He’s bathing in the feeling, loving it, his blood humming in his veins and his whole body twitching spastically, so close--

It’s cut off far too quickly, Doyoung pulling away after what could’ve only been thirty seconds. Yuta hears the desperate plea that comes out of his mouth, but he can’t understand it, the words warbled as he tries to pull Doyoung’s head back towards his neck. It wasn’t enough, he wanted more.

For the first time, Doyoung doesn’t lick at Yuta’s neck to close the wound. Instead, he nuzzles against Yuta’s skin again, rubbing himself against the bite mark like a cat would with it’s owner. When he lifts his head, Yuta feels dizzy at the sight of Doyoung staring back at him with dark, dark eyes, fangs elongated and dipping out of his mouth and whole bottom half of his face smeared with blood. There’s even a bit of it on the tip of his nose, and while Yuta knows his rational reaction should be sheer terror, his first thought is,  _ fuck. _

Doyoung pulls his hand away from Yuta’s cock, much to Yuta’s chagrin, and the vampire ignores his second plea in favor of sticking his own fingers in his mouth. Yuta lets out a groan watching Doyoung suck on three fingers, and when he pulls them out of his mouth they’re coated in sticky, thick saliva, tinted pink from the remnants of blood in Doyoung’s mouth.

“You wanted me to fuck you,” Doyoung says, voice gravelly and deep. It comes out sounding less like a statement and more like he was asking for confirmation. Yuta nods so fast he thinks he might break his neck, words alluding him by now.

Doyoung slides his first finger into Yuta the same time he thrusts shallowly against Yuta’s own cock, mouth attaching back to the side of Yuta’s neck so he could suck deep purple marks there. Yuta feels overwhelmed, all the sensations heightened from what he could only assume was a post-feeding high. He curls one hand back into Doyoung’s hair, using the other to cover his mouth as he hiccups over a sob, trying desperately to keep his noises at bay.

Doyoung tugs at Yuta’s hand, pulling it away from his mouth and giving him a dangerous look.

“I want to hear you,” Doyoung tells him, and it sounds like a command, the tone of voice he uses leaving no room for arguing. Yuta nods again, taken over by a desperate need to please the vampire, and when Doyoung adds a second finger, Yuta moans loudly, chest vibrating with the sound.

Doyoung, who has already returned to his task of sucking dark hickeys along Yuta’s skin, smiles against his throat. “Good boy.”

He accentuates his words with a particularly deep thrust, the drag of his cock against Yuta’s own combined with praise from the vampire making him whimper through his teeth.

Doyoung kisses him again when he adds a third finger, and his mouth tastes coppery with Yuta’s blood, but just as sweet as before. Yuta can feels his eyes starting to water at the overstimulation, from the rutting between them to Doyoung’s fingers pressing insistently against the spot that makes him see stars to the way he kisses him so gently Yuta feels like a porcelain doll that might break. 

When Doyoung slowly removes his fingers, Yuta takes the opportunity to pull back just enough so he can catch his breath and find his voice.

“You don’t--” He tries, voice raspy and low. “You don’t have to hold yourself back, you know.”

Doyoung hesitates for a split second as he lines up his own cock with Yuta’s entrance, and it’s so quick Yuta wouldn’t have caught it if he wasn’t watching the way Doyoung’s brow furrowed slightly at his words. The vampire chooses to ignore him, however, so Yuta presses on.

“I’m not going to-- ah!-- I’m not going to break,” Yuta gets out through gritted teeth as Doyoung pushes into him, oh so gentle and so slow Yuta felt like he was being split open so that his entire being was on display for the other man. “You can let yourself go for once.”

Doyoung’s gaze finally flickers to meet Yuta’s, and his eyes are much softer than they were just minutes ago. “I don’t want to hurt you,” He whispers, although the way he can’t seem to help but thrust shallowly into Yuta despite going slowly doesn’t go unnoticed by the other. 

Yuta feels his heart twist way too tight at the words, and that foreign feeling he had from before was back. It clenched his chest in a vice-like grip, satisfying but desperate at the same time, and as Doyoung bottoms out and Yuta holds his gaze, he suddenly realizes what exactly that feeling is.

“Oh,” Yuta whimpers out loud, taken aback by the realization, and how the waves of love for Doyoung hit him like a tsunami now that he knows what they actually are. He can feel his eyes filling with tears, but he can’t seem to stop them, and they’re spilling out before he can say anything about it. His heart balloons at the concerned look Doyoung gives him, and a sob bubbles up from his chest without warning. “Oh, no.”

Doyoung reaches out to thumb at the tears, eyes gentle and worried. “Does it hurt? Are you okay?”

Yuta wipes at his cheeks with the back of his hands. “Please move,” He manages to get out, voice breaking embarrassingly at the end.

Doyoung nods, his hands coming to settle on Yuta’s hips, and he thrusts once, twice. Yuta lets out a throat moan at the sensation, squeezing his eyes shut and letting the pleasure overtake the sudden burning in his heart that screamed at him to kiss Doyoung, to tell him he loved him. 

Doyoung sets up a rhythm, fucking Yuta with sharp, steady thrusts. His hands slide up Yuta’s sides and come to cup Yuta’s face, forcing the other to open his eyes and meet his gaze.

“Yuta,” Doyoung says. Yuta sobs again, throat sore from the noise, and Doyoung looks at him with an unreadable expression in his eyes. “Yuta, do you want me to bite you?”

_ No,  _ Yuta’s brain shrieks.  _ Kiss me. _ But instead, Yuta gasps out,  _ “Yes.” _

The red film slides over Doyoung’s eyes again, and he gently traces his fingers down Yuta’s jaw, pushing it to the side so his neck is exposed.

“My pretty Yuta,” Doyoung murmurs, and his voice is velvety soft and deadly. “You look so lovely like this. No one is ever going to hurt you again.”

Yuta feels the pricks of a headache coming on, the pain just barely getting through from the electric pleasure zinging up his spine as Doyoung continues driving into him with determination despite his kind words. The tears in his eyes spill over again, and he must look so ugly, crying and whimpering with his head pulled back and to the side while Doyoung fucks him. 

“We’re almost there,” Doyoung encourages him. “Just a little bit more, I only need a little bit more. You’ll give it to me, won’t you, my Yuta?”

Yuta babbles out a ‘yes’, his heart hammering in his chest, ready to give himself entirely to the vampire. Whatever he wanted, he would give it to him, even if it was all the blood in his body or his eternal soul. Doyoung could have it.

Doyoung finally,  _ finally, _ sinks his teeth into Yuta’s throat again. Yuta’s whole body vibrates, all his thoughts blanking out when he comes so unexpectedly it takes him completely by surprise. Everything goes white, but he can feel every touch and point of his body that Doyoung held- he can feel the teeth in his neck, the hands holding his arms down so he wouldn’t move too much, Doyoung still fucking him relentlessly through his orgasm. His climax peaks with him letting out a noise similar to a shout, and then he’s blacking out completely.

 

He comes to slowly, his whole body aching like he had been hit by a truck. He feels something sturdy and solid around him, and despite the fact he feels like his whole entire body was one big bruise, his mind feels more relaxed and content than he can remember being in a long time.

When he opens his eyes, he finds himself slumped in Doyoung’s lap, the other man’s arms wrapped around him securely. His cheek rests against Doyoung’s shoulder, and although he really wants to pull back and look Doyoung in the eye, he was far too comfortable in this position. Instead, he nuzzles his face gently into Doyoung’s neck, closing his eyes again and enjoying the feel of their skin pressed together.

Doyoung shifts slightly, running his hand over Yuta’s back soothingly. “You’re awake.”

Yuta nods against his shoulder. “Did I black out?” He asks, and he winces at how raw his throat feels, how raspy his voice comes out.

“Yes,” Doyoung murmurs. “I believe I overwhelmed you. I’m sorry.” 

Yuta rearranges his lower half, and as he does so, he feels come, sticky and slick, not only slide between their stomachs, but leak out of him and drip down his thigh onto the sheets.

“Did you come inside me?” Yuta asks, startled enough that he pulls his head back to meet Doyoung’s gaze. The vampire’s mouth and cheeks were still stained with dried blood, but his eyes were back to normal, soft and playful as he smiles at Yuta.

“You wanted me to, no?” Doyoung asks, and Yuta feels himself flush, his ears turning red.

“It’s common courtesy to ask,” He replies, although it comes out sounding breathless instead of teasing.

Doyoung quirks a brow. “Is it alright that I came inside you?”

“Before!” Yuta groans, slumping back down against Doyoung and burying his face in his shoulder. “You’re supposed to ask me  _ before  _ you come!”

Doyoung’s chest rumbles as he laughs, one of his hands settling in Yuta’s hair to gently scratch at his scalp. They fall into silence like that, holding each other, and despite the mess they’ve made, Yuta thinks he could most definitely fall asleep in this position, his heart be damned. 

He can deal with those feelings in the morning.   
  



	9. Chapter 9

Yuta is woken by the soft morning light flitting through the curtains, casting long, thin lines of warmth across the room. He’s on his side, curled against Doyoung, who was flat on his back, his eyes closed and his hand holding Yuta’s own against his bare chest.

Doyoung’s fingertips have the faintest stains of red on them, and along his jaw and mouth the dried blood is more concentrated, tinting his otherwise flawless skin with a pale red. Yuta isn’t sure if he’s breathing, because Doyoung’s chest doesn’t move at all, and his body is completely still. It’s still jarring to see, despite knowing vampires don’t need to breathe to survive.

Yuta slowly spreads his fingers against Doyoung’s chest, laying his palm flat against the skin and wondering if he would feel a heartbeat. After a few seconds of heavy silence, Yuta finds it a fruitless endeavor; there’s no pulse beneath Doyoung’s skin, no humming of blood in his veins or pumping of his heart.

Yuta doesn’t really mind. He shifts his head on the pillow, turning his gaze to Doyoung’s face- the sharp curve of his nose, the smoothness of his skin, the way his lashes brush his cheekbones and leave shadows beneath them. 

Like a vice gripping his chest, the sharp pain Yuta feels just staring at the vampire takes him by surprise. His heart balloons with affection, but there’s a dark twinge of something like a possessive, territorial feeling of  _ mine.  _ He swallows hard, trying to push the feeling down. He didn’t want anyone else near Doyoung. He didn’t want anyone else touching Doyoung. He didn’t want Doyoung anywhere without him.

Doyoung’s head rolls gently to face Yuta, and he slowly opens his eyes, face blank despite catching Yuta in the act of watching him sleep.

Yuta frowns at this thought. “Were you asleep?”

Doyoung hums in response. “Yes.” 

“I didn’t know vampires could sleep.”

“We can, but it’s not necessary for survival,” Doyoung wraps his fingers around Yuta’s hand on his chest. “It’s just nice to fall into darkness, sometimes,” He adds in a whisper, looking down at where their hands were interlocked. 

Yuta’s heart clenches at the almost vulnerable tone Doyoung’s voice takes on as he speaks. To distract himself, Yuta pulls his hand away to lick at his own thumb, reaching out to rub vigorously at the blood stains on Doyoung’s cheeks.

Doyoung goes a little bit cross-eyed trying to watch what he’s doing, looking confused. “What are you doing?” 

“You’ve got blood everywhere,” Yuta explains, wetting his thumb again to drag it across a particularly tough spot beneath Doyoung’s lips.

Doyoung opens his mouth the slightest amount, just enough that Yuta’s thumb dips between his lips. Yuta can see the tips of the vampire’s fangs, not as elongated as they had been last night, but still visible. Doyoung holds his gaze as he closes his mouth around the pad of Yuta’s thumb and sucks the blood off.

Yuta is silent, warmth pooling low in his stomach and between his legs, and he squirms, pulling his hand away. “Don’t do that,” He manages to mumble out, feeling his face flush.

Doyoung’s mouth quirks upwards into a half-smile, and Yuta is having trouble looking away from his eyes, drawing him in like he’s hypnotized.

It only breaks when Yuta hears the tell tale ringing of his phone somewhere on the floor. He sits up, looking around the room for his pants from last night, and he has to bend his back awkwardly so half his body is dangling off the bed to grab it, too lazy to actually get up.

Doyoung sits up as well, stretching his body gracefully like a cat, and Yuta has to drag his eyes away from the smooth expanse of skin on display for him to answer the phone.

“Hello?”

“Hey, it’s me,” Comes Ten’s voice through the phone. “Are you feeling better? I know you said you were just tired but you looked kind of sick when you left the bar last night.”

Yuta feels guilty, remembering how he’d snapped at Ten out of jealousy before storming out of the bar with Doyoung in tow. “Yeah, I’m fine now. Sorry I was in weird mood.”

“That’s okay. I figured you were pretty shaken up after that whole thing with those guys and Doyoung.”

There’s silence between them for a moment. Then, Ten asks, “So, did you fuck Doyoung yet?”

Doyoung can definitely hear him, even without his heightened vampire senses, and he laughs openly when Yuta makes a noise like he’s just choked.

_ “What?”  _

“I will take that as a yes,” Ten says smugly, and Yuta can practically hear the grin in his voice. “Anyway, do you think you could take a moment away from your boy toy to have coffee with me?”

Yuta takes a moment to look Doyoung over again, at the sheets piling in his lap and just barely hanging off his hips. He still has blood on his face that Yuta hadn’t managed to wipe off, and when Yuta looks at him, he flashes him a dazzling smile that leaves Yuta a little breathless.

“I mean, my situation’s pretty good here, but I guess if you’re  _ that _ desperate to see me I can make time,” Yuta finally replies, smiling back at Doyoung.

“Fuck you. I’ll text you my hotel’s address.” 

 

Yuta should realize something is wrong when he arrives at Ten’s hotel room and the younger boy opens the door with a grim look on his face.

“What’s wrong?” Yuta asks immediately, Ten ushering for him to come inside. There’s a little table with coffee and pastries Yuta can only assume were ordered via room service for the two of them, but food is the last thing on his mind as Ten hands him the Sunday newspaper.

Yuta scans the headline-  _ POLICE CRACK DOWN ON HUNTING ALL VAMPS IN COUNTRY FOR GOOD-  _ and feels his heart drop into his stomach. 

“Oh,” He breathes out, for lack of the right words to voice his thoughts. He doesn’t read the actual article, just keeps rereading the title, as though if he stares at it long enough the words will morph into something else.

Ten watches him warily. Gently, he reaches out to take the newspaper easily from Yuta’s hands, placing it on the bed face down so the article wasn’t visible anymore.

Yuta stares at the other, at a loss for words. Ten seems to be waiting for him to say something, and when he doesn’t, the younger asks, “What are you going to do?”

Yuta is snapped out of his own thoughts at the question, mind swirling with images of Doyoung and the flyers out for him in Russia and the CCTV video of the vampire in Daegu. He processes the words slowly, swallowing their implication.

Yuta has never been one for miscommunication. He has always been the one between their group of friends, since they were children, to mediate situations between them and end arguments with a kind word. When they were in primary school, Ten had thrown a fistful of sand into Johnny’s eyes when the other boy stole his bucket. Yuta had been the one to wipe Johnny’s eyes and get them both to apologize to each other. When they were in high school, and their friend Jaehyun had gotten blackout drunk at a party and hooked up with the boy Yuta had been harboring a crush on for years, Yuta stormed into Jaehyun’s house the next day and demanded they discuss the elephant in the room until it was resolved and there was no tension between them.

But now? Now Yuta doesn’t know what to do. He wasn’t even able to gather the courage last night to tell Doyoung how he feels, despite the vampire opening up little by little the past few days. He’s only known him a week. He doesn’t know anything about him other than he’s from North Korea and he doesn’t have any family left and he was over one hundred years old. Yet the warm, butterfly-like feeling Yuta gets in his stomach whenever he looks at Doyoung is so recognizable to him after a life of falling in love easily with so many people.

Now, for the first time in his life, Yuta doesn’t want to talk about what has to happen next. He doesn’t want to talk to Ten about what their next steps should be. He wants to avoid this subject entirely.

“I don’t know,” He finally whispers, although they both know he’s lying. They both know what he’s going to do. What he has to do.

Ten gives him a look Yuta can’t read, somewhere between pity and concern. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Yuta shakes his head, feeling something swell up in his throat that makes it hard to talk, eyes stinging. “Can we just eat breakfast?”

Ten nods, and they both move to sit at the table. The silence between them is tense and awkward, something that has never happened with Ten since Yuta’s known him. There’s an obvious elephant in the room that they’re not addressing, and Yuta would rather it never be acknowledged, although he knows that’s impossible.

After only a few minutes of agonizing silence, only broken Ten’s spoon clinking the china as he stirs his coffee and the crackling of a pastry as Yuta breaks it to pieces on his plate, Ten finally clears his throat.

“He mentioned it to me, you know.”

Yuta looks up, not even needing to ask who he was referring to. “He did?”

Ten nods, looking down into his coffee seriously. “Last night, at the bar. When you went outside to find Johnny, he was telling me about vampires and the way they live. About their soulmates.”

Yuta’s throat fills with bile at the word, despite him knowing it should be something positive. “Soulmates?”

“Yeah,” Ten looks up to meet his gaze, eyes serious. “Something about how vampires find partners for life. About how they’re usually other vampires, but sometimes they’re humans, too. He said he was a human when he met the vampire who turned him, who promised him he was her soulmate. But he wasn’t, and then she left him in Russia to die after she turned him.”

Yuta feels a little sick to his stomach. Doyoung hadn’t told him any of this. He had never mentioned how, or who turned him.

Ten continues, voice too gentle compared to the topic at hand, as though he were afraid if he spoke normally Yuta would break down. “He said that vampires know when someone is their soulmate, but if it’s a human, they won’t know. Humans get soulmates, too, but they can’t sense it like vampires can.”

“Oh,” Is all Yuta can get out once again.

“He said you’re his soulmate, Yuta,” Ten whispers. “He said he thinks he has to go far away because he doesn’t want to turn you into a monster like him, and if he stays he’s bound to turn you, maybe on purpose, or maybe by accident.”

Yuta really would rather not cry in front of Ten, although it’s not like Ten hasn’t seen it before. Ten has seen him when he’s been dumped, been throwing up after drinking far too much, collapsing in the street when he learned his grandmother died. Ten has seen it all, but Yuta feels like this- this is too private. This makes him feel like he’s been split open and his insides were bared to see and his heart was on the table to be studied and dissected.

“Okay,” Yuta says, finally, voice barely a whisper. His eyes are watery, making Ten look blurry in front of him, but he refuses to let himself cry. “Okay, I’ll just-- I think I’ll-- Thanks for breakfast,” His voice wobbles at the end, cracking like he was going through puberty again. Ten glances at the pastry on Yuta’s plate that was very clearly untouched, but he doesn’t move to stop Yuta as the other gets to his feet to leave.

“I’ll call you,” Yuta manages to say, scrambling to get out of the stuffy room, feeling like everything was closing in on him. He can feel Ten’s eyes on him, unwavering, and he slams the door shut behind him, thankful that Ten seems to realize Yuta needs to be alone right now.

He makes it to the lobby of the hotel, and as he pushes through the swinging doors and the cold, fresh morning air hits him in the face, he breaks down. His throat catches on a sob, and the tears flow freely now that he was away from prying eyes (Ten’s, not the strangers who walk by and give him worried looks. He could care less about them).

Yuta manages to stumble onto the subway, crying silently the entire way home. He’s grateful it’s early Sunday morning, so there aren’t as many people that could catch him like this, but there’s still a few. He picks himself up and puts himself back together at his stop, wiping at his red cheeks and smearing the tears away as best he can. When he reaches his apartment, he trips up the stairs, not trusting himself to stand alone in the elevator with just his sad reflection looking back at him through the metal doors.

He unlocks the front door with shaky fingers, and when he closes the door gently behind him he looks up to find Doyoung standing at the end of the hall. He’s wearing a white tee and grey sweats that are both too large for him, and both belong to Yuta. He looks far too domestic and comfortable in this setting, and if Yuta closes his eyes, he can almost pretend they were a normal couple. One that met in college at a party, or in the library, and went on normal dates and had normal friends and did normal things, like go to dinner and watch tv and cook for each other.

But instead Doyoung’s face becomes concerned, because of course he can sense Yuta’s mood, of course he could see the redness around his eyes and the blistered edges of his nose from sniffling. Doyoung still has that dried blood crusted along his chin, and Yuta’s heart flips at the sight, because even though he should be disgusted, he still feels those butterflies just looking at the vampire.

“What happened?” Doyoung asks, taking a step forward, but Yuta is quicker. He marches right up to Doyoung and grabs him by the face, pulling him close so he can kiss him with as much emotion as he can muster. Doyoung seems to melt into the kiss as well, hands coming to rest on Yuta’s hips, and Yuta can feel a fresh wave of tears starting to spill over once again. Doyoung makes a surprised noise at the wetness, moving to pull away, but Yuta keeps him still, kissing him over and over as though they were both dying and this was the last time he could touch him.

“Yuta,” Doyoung begins against his lips, but Yuta ignores him, moving his lips to kiss along the vampire’s cheeks, along his nose and his jaw.

“Why do we have to be soulmates?” Yuta asks, voice breathy and broken. Doyoung stiffens under his hands, eyes widening in surprise at his words. “Why do you want to leave me? Don’t you love me? What am I supposed to do now?”

“Oh, Yuta,” Doyoung uses his strength to finally push Yuta away so he can hold him at arms length. His eyes look sad, and Yuta just feels stupid and confused and like his heart was going to come out of his throat if he spoke one more time. Doyoung reaches up to pet Yuta’s hair, smiling gently. “My pretty Yuta. I’m sorry.”

The words hold so much implication, like there was so much more Doyoung would like to say, but he can’t put it into words. It’s okay, though, Yuta understands. It feels like thorns are ripping at his chest and he can’t really process anything other than how much he wishes Doyoung would hold him right now, tell him everything was going to be okay.

Doyoung does wrap his arms around Yuta and pull him against his chest, but he doesn’t tell him everything’s going to be okay. Instead he presses his lips against the crown of Yuta’s head, lets him sob into his shoulder and repeats his name over and over, like a prayer, until Yuta can’t find it in himself to cry anymore. 


	10. Chapter 10

Yuta has a dream that night, and in it, he is Doyoung.

He knows he’s Doyoung because several people call him by the name, including an older, warm looking woman with greying hair who he thinks is his mother. She has a comforting smile and hugs him a lot and in the morning, when he wakes up and stumbles through the house sleepily, she ushers him into the kitchen to present a full traditional breakfast.

Yuta doesn’t know what year it is. He thinks it’s early 1900’s- everyone is wearing conservative clothes, the women in long linen skirts and the men in three piece suits. There doesn’t seem to be any phones and the cars are more like old-timey automobiles that Yuta’s only seen in history books. A man who Yuta thinks is his father enters the room as well with a little girl on his hip, kisses his mother and places the girl on the seat beside Yuta at the table.

What sounds like a clocks hand ticking at rapid speed rings throughout the room, and everything freezes in place, except Yuta. With a whooshing noise and a dizzying spinning of his surroundings, Yuta is thrown into a new setting.

It’s dark, and chilly out, and Yuta doesn’t think he’s supposed to be out. Something about curfews, and guards who could throw him in jail without a reason, because they didn’t belong in this country in the first place, and they most definitely didn’t care about it’s people. But there’s a woman meeting him here, in this dark alley. Yuta is waiting for her, and he wraps his coat tighter around his arms, stuttering over an inhale, breath coming out in visible puffs.

“Doyoung,” Someone murmurs, and when Yuta turns quickly to find the woman he’s been waiting for. Tall, beautiful, with pale blonde hair and blue eyes. Not Korean; no, something else. Russian, maybe, from the slight lilt to her voice when she speaks his name. It doesn’t matter, because she speaks Korean fluently, and within seconds she’s letting Yuta pull her into his arms and kiss her.

“Doyoung,” She whispers again, pulling back so she can press her cold lips just behind his ear. Yuta shivers, and despite the thin coat she wears, she doesn’t seem nearly as cold as he is. “Did you think about it? Do you want to be with me forever?”

Yuta isn’t sure what she’s talking about, but his head nods quickly, heart pounding in his chest. Something pulls at his chest, something like love, or maybe more; infatuation, or obsession. He was obsessed with this woman. He would probably die for her.

She flashes a smile at him, teeth pearly white and canines long and sharp. Yuta blinks, and the clocks ticking sounds up again as she dives for his throat. With a prick of pain, everything goes black, and Yuta can feel everything spinning again.

Yuta opens his eyes again, and everything hurts. His throat feels like it’s been slit open, his hands tremble violently, his head pounds, his skin prickles like thousands of tiny needles were being poked into him at once.

The sky is grey and cold, and the light drizzle of rain patters down onto his face, from where he’s laying on the hard, concrete ground. He can hear voices shouting nearby- not in Korean, but in Japanese. He can recognize it as himself, but the body he’s in, Doyoung’s, can’t understand what they’re saying.

When he sits up, there are half a dozen of them surrounding him, their bayonets pointed at him. They were clearly telling him to stand, but before he can do anything, he inhales, and the scent of their blood hits him like a train. His wires cross, and his brain blanks out, and all he can think is _feed._

He dives for the one closest to him as the clock ticks, and then everything spins out once again.

Yuta is in a coffee shop, and this is definitely Russia, maybe Saint Petersburg. He can hear people whispering around him in Russian, and when he glances at the newspaper on the table beside his coffee, he finds the date- August 1945. He skims the paper, not actually reading it, attention focused on the voices around him. He’s listening specifically for the jingle of the doors bell, waiting for the man in the right corner of the room to greet his friend. When the door does jingle, Yuta gets a whiff of another, familiar scent, and he whips around in his seat the same time the woman stepping through the door picks up his own scent.

It’s the woman from Korea, the one who had turned him. The one who had promised him forever, then turned him into this monster and left him to die.

Her face shows her surprise at seeing him here, alive, in Russia, nearly thirty years after she turned him. Within a split second, she’s turning on her heel and fleeing out the door, and Yuta is scrambling after her, coffee spilling over the newspaper in his haste to catch her.

The clock ticks, and the shop spins, and when Yuta looks down, he’s standing over her mangled body. There’s blood everywhere, her limbs mangled and hanging off, her throat torn open. Yuta looks down at his own hands, and finds them dripping in blood. He lifts his fingers to his mouth, looking down into her almost lifeless eyes that were still staring up at him, just barely clinging to what little life she could. He sucks on the tip of his thumb, licking her blood off cleanly.

He can feel his chest aching, his head pounding, an exhausted sort of satisfaction settling in his bones. Underneath it, a shaky nervousness of the unknown. Of what will happen after this, now that he’s caught her.

She breathes out her last, shuddering breath, and the clock doesn’t tick this time, but his surroundings begin to spin.

Yuta is in an alley. It’s freezing cold, and despite the fact he can’t get cold, it’s beginning to get to him, seeping into his bones. His coat is damp with blood- his own blood, pouring from a wound on his chest. Something had happened to him; Some men, who had reeked of alcohol and had brandished knives at him in the street, waving bright yellow flyers that read of a dangerous vampire loose in city.

Yuta hadn’t meant to be there. He had tried to stay in the mountains, but he was so hungry, and animal blood could only do so much for him. He had been spotted in the seventh district, and he couldn’t even flee, too weak with hunger. The men had been much stronger than him because of this, and they had managed to attack him, slicing open his chest before he could get away. They had left him in this alley and stumbled off into the darkness.

Yuta thought it was so ironic, that his human life had ended in an alley like this, and now it seemed his real death had arrived in a similar situation. But than he catches a whiff of a human. He curls into himself in a panic, convinced he was going to be attacked again.

Instead, it’s a single man, wrapped in a big padded coat and carrying a small paper bag. The man peers into the alley, squinting to make out Yuta in the dark.

“Hello?” The man asks in Russian. Yuta curls into himself even more, hoping the darkness will swallow him and the human’s poor vision will make Yuta imperceptible in the darkness.

“Are you okay?” The man asks, this time in broken English. “Do you need help?”

He takes a step forward, and Yuta whimpers pathetically, like a dying animal in fear. The man pulls away immediately, holding his hands up in the air to show he meant no threat. Yuta hisses in pain as he tries to pull his coat over himself, and the man must be able to notice all of the blood, because he gasps suddenly.

The man fumbles through his coat pockets, cursing to himself, and it takes Yuta moment to realize the man was speaking Korean. His heart leaps in his chest, and he tries to gather his voice. Wants so desperately to say something in Korean, his mother tongue, something he hasn’t been able to do in decades. Not since he fled Rason.

“-bleeding _everywhere,”_ The man is saying into his phone. “He needs help, I don’t know what to do-”

Help. The man wants to help him. Yuta coughs, clearing his throat, his chest burning from the wound. The man’s voice is pitching higher as he describes the situation to whoever was on the other end, tongue tripping over words in a clear panic.

“-I don’t even know if he’s fully conscious,” The man says.

A bright light creeps around the corner, and Yuta shrinks into himself, opening his mouth in hopes that the light will allow the man to see him clearly, give him a moment to mouth something at the man if he couldn’t gather his voice in time. A car creeps by behind the man, and he’s lit up from behind like the angels painted on stained glass that he used to see in churches with his mother as a child.

He opens his mouth, and the man’s eyes widen considerably at the moment he must notice the fangs. The light reflects off the wall, lights up the man’s face, and Yuta finds he’s looking at himself, the night he found Doyoung- in his big padded jacket, cheeks red from the cold and clutching a bag of medicine for Ten at home.

The clock ticks louder than before, and Yuta watches himself spin, spin out of sight.

When he regains consciousness, he’s in an unfamiliar setting. Doyoung doesn’t know where it is, but Yuta’s subconscious recognizes it immediately by the scent as Ten’s apartment in Moscow.

Yuta’s chest doesn’t hurt anymore. He’s shirtless, the crackling of a fire close by warming his skin. He was starting to feel more like himself. Someone had saved him- that man had saved him.

Fingers trace along his chin, tilting his head back, and Yuta snaps his eyes open at the contact. The man- himself, wrapped in a big red sweater, face still flushed from the cold and exertion of carrying a vampire all the way home- was staring down at him, eyes wide, fingers still resting on Yuta’s chin.

The man smells so good; Yuta can hear the blood coursing through his veins, can smell the sweet, almost sickly scent of it this close. He opens his mouth just the slightest, hoping that the man will let him feed. Will help him even more, even though he’s too weak to ask for it now.

The man’s fingers curl around his chin tightly to hold it in place, and he places the pad of his thumb against one of Yuta’s fangs. It pricks open his skin, and just the sight of blood is enough to have Yuta’s head spinning.

The clock ticks, and with the sound of someone’s footsteps coming down the hallway, Yuta blacks out, the smell of the man’s blood still lingering in the back of his throat.

 

Yuta jerks awake, gasping. His skin is sticky with sweat, his heart pounding in his chest. He rolls to his right, hands reaching out subconsciously. The sheets shift beside him, and a second later Doyoung’s arms are wrapping around him, pulling him against his chest. 

It’s quiet, in his bedroom. It’s still light out, early afternoon, the only sounds between the walls the few cars speeding by on the street and the pounding of his heartbeat in his ears. Doyoung shushes him much like a mother would, petting his hair slowly.

It takes a few minutes for him to find his voice, his chest still tingling from where the wound had been. Then, he manages to get out, “Were those your memories?”

There’s a long pause. Doyoung doesn’t even ask what he’s referring to. “Yes.”

Yuta’s mind plays the dream over and over like a movie reel. The blonde woman, the Japanese soldiers, the men who had attacked Doyoung in the street. Yuta curls his fingers tighter in Doyoung’s shirt, squeezing his eyes shut.

“I’m sorry,” He whispers, although he’s not sure what he’s apologizing for.

Doyoung presses a kiss to the crown of Yuta’s head, voice soft and barely there when he replies, “Don’t worry. I’m alright, now.”

_ Now.  _ The word lingers between them, and Yuta can’t help but feel his heart break over everything Doyoung has been through. No wonder he felt he owed a life debt to Yuta- he was the first person in almost a hundred years that had shown him any sympathy.

“I can take you back,” Yuta finally mumbles, mouth pressed against Doyoung’s throat. “I’ll make sure you’re safe.”

Doyoung shifts, pulling Yuta tightly against him. He doesn’t respond, and instead, Yuta slips back to sleep with foreign memories of himself as some sort of angel in disguise amongst a cold, heartless world.    
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> doyoung was turned into a vampire during the japanese occupation of korea (hence the japanese soldiers). the date on the newspaper when he was in the coffee shop was the month/year north and south korea were split between the soviet union and america respectively after world war II. (just some fun history facts for ya)


	11. Chapter 11

Yuta doesn’t actually realize the severity of the situation until Ten shows up at his apartment on a Tuesday morning with a grim face and a newspaper whose headline reads  _ TWO VAMPS CAUGHT IN BUSAN, ONE IN GWANGJU, TRIAL TO COME. _

Time is is unforgiving to everyone, and holds no prejudice. It moves as slowly or as quickly as it likes, and now it seems it’s pinwheeling as fast as it can, slipping through Yuta’s fingers like sand and disappearing into thin air. He doesn’t have much time. They don’t have much time.

Ten and Doyoung sit down at the kitchen table to talk. They switch between Korean and Russian, voices drifting through Yuta’s bedroom door as he gets dressed for work. Yuta can only catch a few words of what they’re saying. He hears  _ plane, train, bus.  _ He hears  _ mountains  _ and  _ Moscow,  _ but after that they switch to full Russian, and Yuta loses track of the conversation.

When he emerges from his bedroom after fifteen minutes or so, Doyoung is sitting alone at the table, the tell tale clicking of the front door into place alerting him that Ten had just left. He thinks it’s a little odd Ten left without saying goodbye, but either way, he says nothing, instead moving to turn on the coffee pot.

He can feel Doyoung’s eyes watching him intently, following him much like a painting would wherever he moves. He tries his best not to think about it, until the coffee timer beeps and he jumps, startled, and whips around to glare at Doyoung.

“What?” He snaps. He’s not entirely sure why he’s annoyed; it was building up in the pit of his stomach, an unsettling feeling that makes him feel on edge. Something was wrong.

Doyoung’s face is somber. He meets Yuta’s gaze heavily, eyes dark and unblinking, and Yuta feels a shiver of anxiousness run down his spine at the look.

“What?” He repeats, much softer this time. The coffee was starting to burn, the sizzling noise it was making the only tangible sound between the kitchen walls.

Yuta blinks, hears the scraping of the chair, and suddenly Doyoung is in front of him, crowding him up against the counters, hands settling on his hips. Yuta feels like a cornered animal, gripping the counters edges for support, the breath knocked out of his chest at the vampire’s sudden proximity.

Doyoung noses at his neck, Yuta willingly lifting his chin, unsure. That uneasiness was still there, in the way he bared his neck, in the way Doyoung’s fingers pressed into his hip bones. In the way Doyoung inhales deeply just behind Yuta’s ear, like he was an addict getting his morning fix, making Yuta blush high in his cheeks. 

“My pretty Yuta,” Doyoung murmurs quietly, and Yuta can’t help but shiver again, this time for a different reason. Doyoung’s nose brushes along Yuta’s throat, breathing evenly as he scents him at different points. “Yuta, my Yuta.”

“Yes,” Yuta manages to choke out, throat working hard to get himself to speak when he was feeling so flushed and overwhelmed. “Yours.”

Doyoung pauses at that, lips pressed against the pulse under his jaw. He pulls away slowly, drags his head up so he can gently tilt his forehead against Yuta’s own. His eyes flutter shut, and for a second, Yuta doesn’t dare to breathe, or move at all to break whatever moment was happening between them (even if he had no idea what that moment was, or what had triggered it). Yuta feels Doyoung lift one hand and curl his fingers delicately around the back of Yuta’s neck, holding him in place.  

“Not a monster,” Doyoung whispers, and Yuta’s not sure if he’s speaking to him or to himself. His eyes open than, just as dark as before, and the look in them is glassy and far away. If he weren’t a vampire, Yuta would swear Doyoung was about to cry. “You’re not a monster.”

Yuta frowns. He starts to speak, to ask what Doyoung was talking about, but he’s cut off when Doyoung abruptly lets go of him and pulls away. The glassy look in his eyes smooths over, and suddenly he’s back to his usual distanced expression. It reminds Yuta of when he had first had Doyoung on the cold floors of Ten’s apartment, and Doyoung had regarded him warily, like he was ready to flee at any moment should Yuta hurt him.

“Doyoung-” Yuta begins, but Doyoung is already moving to sit back at the table, looking disinterested.

“You’re going to be late,” Doyoung announces, pointing at the oven clock. “It’s ten past.”

Yuta spins around to confirm the time, and proceeds to shout a string of curses, all thoughts of Doyoung’s state of mind fleeing from his head at the potential of being late.

 

When Yuta arrives at work, he finds his boss sitting in one of the chairs in front of his desk. He’s holding a coffee in one hand a newspaper in the other (one of their rival papers, Yuta sees from the name), and Yuta feels some sort of sinking feeling in his stomach when he realizes this probably wasn’t going to be good news for him.

Yuta sighs heavily, alerting the other man of his presence as he trudges over to sit at his desk. “Good morning, sit.” 

Junmyeon smiles at him, tight-lipped and professional as always. “Good morning, Yuta. I haven’t seen you since you returned from your vacation. How was Moscow?”

“Cold,” Yuta replies shortly. “What can I do for you, sir?”

Junmyeon clears his throat, all business once again as the smile slides from his face. “You’ve heard about the vampire crackdown the government has imposed, yes? After that fiasco in Daegu?”

Yuta tries not to wince at the mention of Daegu. “I’ve heard talk of it, yeah.”

“Well, the Gazette has been spitting out articles everyday on the topic, and the public are eating it up,” Junmyeon frowns at the paper in his hand, scanning the article and completely missing the uncomfortable expression on Yuta’s face. “I think we need to put out a feature about it, really take advantage of the anti-vampire wave that’s sweeping the country right now.”

He looks up then, and Yuta quickly fixes his face into one that he hopes looks normal. “Do you think you could take that on, or do you have too much going on right now?”

The gaze Junmyeon fixes him with is one Yuta is familiar with- the question he’s asking is only for pleasantries, and there really isn’t any room for Yuta to deny his request to write up the article, even if he was technically an editor. 

“I can get it done by the end of the day, sir,” Yuta replies in a monotone voice, dropping his own gaze to start up his computer instead.

Junmyeon smiles at him, still as tight-lipped as before, and places the newspaper down on Yuta’s desk. “Excellent! I look forward to reading it. I’ll see you later, Yuta.” 

Yuta glances at the newspaper’s headline as Junmyeon walks out, his heart clenching up at the same title Ten had showed him this morning. 

 

About halfway through the day, Johnny passes Yuta’s office, and looks almost startled when he sees Yuta sitting behind his desk, typing away at his computer.

“What are you doing here?” Johnny asks, frowning in the doorway.

Yuta gives him an amused look. “Working? I know I was gone for a bit, but I do still work here, you know.” 

“Yeah, but Taeyong said--” Johnny cuts himself off, his brow furrowing as he seems to put something together in his head. “Oh.”

“What?”

Johnny shakes his head, mostly to himself, still frowning. “It’s nothing.”

“No,” Yuta doesn’t pause his typing, raising a brow. “What did Taeyong say?” 

“Uh,” Johnny looks down the hall as if checking to see if anyone was listening before he slips into Yuta’s office and closes the door behind him. “Taeyong called me earlier and said Doyoung stopped by our place to say goodbye to him.”

Yuta’s hands freeze on his keyboard, holding down the ㅌ key on repeat. He stares at Johnny, blood suddenly running cold in his veins and making him feel like he was going into shock.

“What?” He repeats, and his voice cracks a little, which makes Johnny wince.

“Taeyong said Doyoung said goodbye to him, and he told him to say goodbye to me, too,” Johnny avoids looking at Yuta, like he was admitting to something he did wrong. “Taeyong asked him where he was going but Doyoung didn’t tell him, he just left with Ten.”

Ten. Yuta’s head spins with the image of Ten and Doyoung speaking in Russian to each other this morning, mentioning Moscow and a plane, a train. The way Doyoung had watched him so closely this morning and acted so out of character. 

He wouldn’t leave without saying goodbye to Yuta, would he?

“Fuck!” Yuta shouts, much too loudly for a work environment. Johnny jumps as Yuta gets to his feet so quickly his desk scrapes against the floor beneath him, his computer monitor wobbling unsteadily from the movement. “Fuck!” He begins shoving things into his bag, clearing his desk as fast as he could. “When did Taeyong call you?”

“Uh-”

Yuta snaps angrily at Johnny, glaring at him. “When did Taeyong call you, Johnny?” He repeats, enunciating each word. 

Johnny steps back as Yuta storms towards the door, throwing it open with much more force than necessary. “About half an hour ago?”

“Fuck!” Yuta repeats, and a some people poke their heads out of their own offices, looking appalled. “He could be in fucking China by now!”

Yuta calls Ten repeatedly as he takes the subway home, hands shaking as he dials and redials Ten’s number over and over. After the seventh or eighth time, Ten finally picks up, answering with a heavy sigh and a, “Yes, Yuta?”

“You fucking bastard,” Yuta snarls into the receiver, and a few people standing near him give him alarmed looks. He ignores them in favor of calling Ten every other indecent name he can think of, in Korean and Japanese. “I hate you. I hate you so much. I’m never watching Momo again, she’s going to need to find a new owner because I’m going to strangle you before you leave.”

Ten stays silent the entire time, and only when Yuta has cursed himself breathless does the other man clear his throat and ask in a condescending voice, “Are you finished?”

Yuta can feel his eyes burning with tears and his throat scratching from holding himself back from screaming. “Yes.”

“He left you a note on your table with an address on where to meet him,” Ten snaps. “And for the record, I wasn’t the one who convinced him to leave. You were.”

Ten hangs up, just like that, and Yuta is left red-faced and confused, glaring at his phone like it had personally done him an injustice. 

 

Even though Yuta knows he won’t be there, he still calls out for Doyoung when he opens the front door to his apartment. Silence greets him instead, heavier than Yuta can ever remember it being, and it rings in his ears until he thinks he’s going to snap over it.

He checks every room thoroughly like he’s looking for a lost pet, even checking under the bed and the closet Doyoung had tucked himself into just a few days ago. When it’s getting very clear that Doyoung was not there, Yuta picks himself up and brings himself to the kitchen, where, sure enough, there is a neatly written note taped to the refrigerator. 

Yuta has never seen Doyoung’s handwriting. It’s neat and extremely legible, almost like it was printed from a computer. Almost perfect, just like Doyoung.

_ “Please meet me at the train station in Perm on Friday morning.”  _ is all it reads. No greeting, no apology, not even a name. Yuta’s stomach rolls over and over like he’s about to be nauseous, and he stares at the note for much longer than he needs to. He doesn’t even know where Perm is.

A quick search on his phone shows him Perm is a small city in Russia just at the base of the Ural mountains. Yuta’s cheeks heat up as he tries desperately not to cry, reassuring himself that maybe this wasn’t goodbye. Maybe Doyoung wanted them to be together somewhere where they could both be safe.

As Yuta stands in his kitchen, buying the next available plane ticket on his phone to Perm, another voice in his head tells him to stop being stupid and accept that this was definitely goodbye. 


	12. Chapter 12

Yuta wonders, as he travels by bus through the streets of Perm, winding its way down the thin, curvy roads, why on earth anyone would ever want to live here. 

It’s colder than he remembers Moscow being, and with the intimidating Ural mountains looming on the edges of the city, it makes it seem worse. They seem to have minds of their own, the peaks disappearing into the low hanging clouds, their faces blanketed with thick layers of snow. They seem to go on and on for miles, and Yuta can’t help but speculate how many other vampires lived in the mountains shadows. Which mountain Doyoung was on.

The bus ambles along for another ten minutes or so, before it pulls up to a joint train station that looks almost decrypted and abandoned. Yuta is the only one to get off, and he doesn’t miss the wary look the old bus driver gives him before the doors creak shut behind him and the bus puffs away down the street.

It’s silent, now, the only sound the distant echoing of church bells from somewhere else in the city. It sounds ominous, while Yuta’s standing here in the archway of an old train station, not a person or car in sight. 

What sounds like a rolodex spinning startles him out of his thoughts, and he’s surprised to see an old fashioned schedule marker on the far right wall of the station. Upon closer inspection, he finds it only has two tracks listed, and only four times for the entire day; the first one of the day was arriving in fifteen minutes, although it didn’t look like there was anyone in the station who was planning on boarding it. Yuta doesn’t even know where it goes.

He takes a seat on one of the three stone benches in the middle of the station. Doyoung’s note had said to meet him at the train station, so it looked like there was nothing else for him to do but wait.

The trip over had been hectic and last minute, and Yuta is pretty sure Junmyeon is going to have a few choice words for him for suddenly taking a weekend off and hopping on another plane to Russia. Yuta doesn’t really care- he hasn’t been able to care much about anything since Doyoung had left, even though it had only been a little over 48 hours.

Yuta is lost in thought, eyes unfocused towards the ground as he thinks over and over the night before Doyoung had left, and what could’ve triggered him to leave, when he hears the slight crunching of snow. When he looks up, Doyoung is standing in the archway of the opposite entrance, looking very familiar and very heart-wrenchingly handsome in his black coat and thick snow boots.

Yuta’s pulse quickens, and he jumps to his feet, his strides doubling in size as he moves as quickly as he can to close the distance between them. Doyoung just stands there, watching him approach, still and back straight. But when Yuta reaches him and throws his arms around him, Doyoung moves to pull him into a hug that’s almost too tight. Almost. 

Yuta’s throat closes up a bit, and for a moment, he can’t speak. He can feels his eyes prick with tears of joy at being reunited, and he feels a little stupid- they had only been apart two days, and Yuta had had the note as confirmation that Doyoung wasn’t gone forever. Apparently, logic didn’t matter when it came to how he felt about the vampire. 

“You’re so stupid,” Yuta gasps out when he finally finds his voice, raspy and with no heat behind it at all. Doyoung snorts in his arms, and one of his hands rests on the back of Yuta’s neck.

“I’m sorry,” Doyoung murmurs, voice smooth and deep and making Yuta shiver as soon as he hears it. “I knew if I told you I was leaving, you would convince me to stay.”

“Damn right I would’ve,” Yuta says. He pulls back, not enough that there’s actual space between them, just enough so he can meet Doyoung’s gaze. His eyes were bright red, and his skin looked a little more sickly than usual, almost like being apart from Yuta for two days had been just as hard on him, too. “You couldn’t have waited? Just a little bit?”

Doyoung smiles at him, small and forced. “No,” He replies simply, like it was easy as that. 

Yuta scowls at him. “It would’ve saved me money,” He grumbles, and Doyoung laughs again. He pulls away so he can offer his hand to Yuta instead, asking, “Walk with me?” when Yuta takes it.

Doyoung leads them out through the archway and surprisingly, onto the snow-covered train tracks. Yuta is hesitant stepping onto them, looking both ways like a train was going to come and hit them as soon as he did.

“They’re abandoned,” Doyoung explained. “They have been since the late nineteen-sixties.”

“Oh,” Yuta says, still stepping tentatively onto them like they were livewires. “But the schedule said one was arriving soon?”

“It’s an automated mechanical schedule,” Doyoung says. He balances on the right track beam effortlessly, strolling along like he was walking on flat ground. “Sort of like a clock. It’s going to keep rolling over to the next scheduled time forever.”

Yuta nods, hoping Doyoung doesn’t catch the way he tries (and fails) to balance on the left track beam, too. “That explains why the bus driver gave me a weird look when I got off here.”

“The station’s tracks lead into the mountains and cut off after a mile or so. People don’t like going near it because they’re frightened vampires will follow the tracks down and hide out in the station to feed on passersby.”

Yuta’s chest twists a little. No wonder it had been so deserted around the station.    
“Wait,” Yuta says slowly as he comes to a sudden realization. “Where do you live? Do you even have a home?”    
Doyoung gives him a soft, almost sad look. “I had a home when I was with you,” He says, voice quiet. Yuta’s heart does a backflip, and it feels like he was hit in the chest with a baseball bat. 

Face burning, Yuta looks away, patting his cheeks with his palms to try to cool them. “Do you just wander the mountains twenty-four-seven?” He asks, trying desperately to ignore the way Doyoung had spoken in past tense, and he misses the melancholic look the other gives him.

“I mostly stay near the tracks,” Doyoung says. “Most vampires are loners, and our interactions are few. Sometimes,” Doyoung’s voice takes on a listless tone, eyes defocusing as he glances into the forest surrounding the tracks. “I’ll go to the station, and I’ll wait for the bus to drive by. Sometimes there’s children looking out the window, and sometimes I can wave to them. Children always wave back.”

Yuta winces to himself, at the revelation that Doyoung had been so desperate for some sort of interaction with another person that he had resorted to hiding out in an abandoned train station and waving at passing children on buses.

“I’ll always wave back,” Yuta mumbles, mostly because he can’t think of anything else to say. When he looks up, Doyoung is giving him such a fond look he can’t help but blush again.

“You’re going to have dreams,” Doyoung announces suddenly, his voice normal again.

“Dreams?” Yuta echos.

Doyoung nods. “Yes. Dreams. Of my memories.”

Yuta has sudden, vivid flashbacks to the dreams he had had of Doyoung’s past, and he feels a little queasy. “Why?”

“I don’t know. It’s just something that happens between… between soulmates.”

Doyoung hesitates over the last word, and Yuta thinks that’s the first time he’s heard Doyoung struggle to speak. He had been able to speak with clear diction when Johnny had insulted him, when he was conversing with Taeyong, even when he had had Yuta underneath him.

Yuta can’t think of a reply, because suddenly Doyoung stops, and Yuta trips when the tracks disappear and he almost falls face first into the snow. Doyoung catches him by the elbow before he can, straightens him up, and Yuta’s thoughts are silenced by the daunting landscape before him.

The forests on their sides pitter out, the trees thinning and than disappearing completely. All Yuta can see is snow, rising higher and higher above him as the mountain looms, threatening and overbearing. There was so much space, so much emptiness. So much… nothing.

The snow crunches under Doyoung’s boots as he steps in front of Yuta, forcing the other to reel his attention back in as the vampire comes into his line of vision and the emptiness is filled once again.

“Don’t be scared of the dreams,” Doyoung says, voice softer than before. “They’ll keep us connected.” 

Yuta’s throat closes up all at once as he registers that this was happening, right now.

He lurches out and grabs hold of Doyoung’s wrist, like that will keep him in place, like it will keep him from leaving. “Don’t-” He manages to get out, voice twisted up in his lungs.

Doyoung gives him an unreadable look, and for the first time Yuta experiences the amount of strength Doyoung hides beneath his clothes firsthand, gently pulling his wrists out of Yuta’s hold despite Yuta squeezing to the point it would bruise a human.

“Be careful, okay?” Doyoung continues. “Don’t go picking fights with strangers. Don’t walk alone at night in Moscow, either,” He smiles, although it doesn’t reach his eyes. “Tell Momo I’ll miss her.” 

“What about me?” Yuta whispers, his chest and eyes burning. “I’ll miss you. I’ll miss you more than anyone.”

Doyoung’s eyes soften, and he reaches out suddenly to place a hand on Yuta’s cheek, brush his thumb over the shallow dip of dark circles beneath Yuta’s eyes. He must’ve started crying, because he feels Doyoung thumb wipe away something wet.

“I’ll always be with you,” Doyoung finally says. “You’ll be alright without me.”

“But I love you,” Yuta gasps out, voice stuttering over a sob that curls deep in his chest. It’s the first time he’s said it out loud. Doyoung’s whole expression shifts, the careful, unreadable expression he always keeps on crumbling completely and leaving him looking very vulnerable. Very human.

“Oh, Yuta,” Doyoung whispers, and he leans forward abruptly to kiss him, his lips cold against Yuta’s. He kisses him feverish and rushed, like he doesn’t have much time, and Yuta supposes they don’t. 

“I love you, too,” Doyoung mumbles against his lips between kisses. “Love you so much. You’re my everything.”

Yuta hiccups over a sob, lets Doyoung keep kissing him despite the salty trail of tears leaking between them. The kisses began to trail off to ones that are slower, sweeter, and Doyoung keeps murmuring things in Russian that Yuta can’t bother trying to translate right now. 

“I love you,” Yuta repeats, voice small. He feels Doyoung pull away, finally, and it takes him a second to open his eyes and for his vision to clear from the tears. 

When it does, he finds he is alone in the emptiness, snow beginning to fall around him and settle softly over the blanket already formed. 


	13. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> written to the song [happy by marina & the diamonds](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCB_MbYyCYQ), which i recommend you listen to while reading.

**Seven Years Later.**

 

Yuta’s cheeks burn from the cold as he’s ushered to his seat in the theatre. In front of him, Johnny and Taeyong march along with their arms linked, Taeyong chattering away excitedly. His head swivels every which way as he takes in the Bolshoi theatre for the first time, giddy and flushed.

They’re near the middle, on the very edge of the aisle. Yuta eyes the two empty seats between him and the aisle and hopes no one is seated there- it would make running to the restroom much easier. He voices this to Johnny, who snorts in response.

“You’re so old,” He comments, grinning, and Yuta can’t help but laugh as well.

“Don’t act like you weren’t already wondering how long it is until the intermission so you can use the bathroom, too,” Yuta says, elbowing the other in the ribs.

Taeyong thrusts his playbill between them excitedly, pointing to Ten’s name listed under _choreographer._ “Look! I’m going to frame this when I get home.”

“I think you have every playbill from every show Ten has ever been in,” Yuta teases, and Johnny gives him a pointed look that confirms his theory.

Taeyong huffs. “I’m proud of him, okay? I remember when he first started ballet lessons when we were five. He choreographed this entire cast.”

"I think there's a vampire in the cast," Johnny says, squinting at the playbill. "First one in Russia."

"I guess the rights movement finally hit them," Yuta replies, glancing at the other people in the audience. He was looking to see if there were any vampires, but it wasn't like he would be able to pick them out of a crowd unless they were baring their fangs for show- which, since their civil rights movement two years ago, they wouldn't have a problem doing in public. They wouldn't have a problem  _being_ in public, although not many of them had come forward yet. 

The lights begin to dim, signaling the ballet was starting, and a hush falls over the crowd. In the front, the orchestra begins to play, loud and exuberant, and Yuta can't help but smile at the eager, almost crazed dance-mom look on Taeyong's face. He had been seeing Ten's ballets alone for so long, it was almost strange to be able to sit through one with someone he knows.

The first batch of dancers come out, dressed in glitter and taffeta and white-teeth smiles. Yuta sits back, rolling his shoulders and letting his back settle against the seat. He had seen this ballet before, but it was the first time he was seeing it when Ten had choreographed, and he couldn't help the fondness that bloomed in his chest as he watches the dancers precise, beautiful movements. Maybe Taeyong wasn't being overly excited, because Yuta felt just as proud of their friend.

There's a shuffling of feet in the aisle, and Yuta hears the usher guide someone to their seat beside him. Yuta turns to give Johnny a knowing look as the person settles into their seat, but Johnny is already looking past Yuta, at the newcomer, expression half-startled and half-terrified.

A hand curls gently into Yuta's own, long fingers intertwining with his, and all the music around him is suddenly muted when Yuta turns back around and finds Doyoung sitting beside him.

He looks exactly the same as he had seven years ago, not a single hair out of place, warm and soft. His fingers tighten in Yuta's, and he smiles gently at him, dark eyes twinkling in dim lighting.

Doyoung turns his head back to the stage, settling into his seat, and it takes Yuta a moment or two to come to his senses and drag his eyes away from the other as well. Even then, he can't help the stupid smile on his face for the rest of the ballet, heart doing somersaults in his chest. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> to everyone who has stuck around since the beginning, or even if you joined halfway through, thank you so much! i really appreciate everyones kind words and encouragement. i read every single comment and even lurk through twitter to read what people say, and it's honestly the only thing thats kept me going through this fic (that, and vampire doyoung).  
> the ending was originally going to be sad, but i realized i couldn't do that the further i got into the fic because i was so attached to doyu's characters in this aha. i hope i did them justice in the end.  
> comments are extremely appreciated, please let me know what you thought! i will respond to them all!   
> *claps hands* that's a wrap


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